Gahan Reserve (aka the ‘little park’ at 41-43 Raphael St, though it’s only little in comparison with FA Andrews Reserve — see below) is a 200 m walk. It is graced by the beautiful tower of the Collingwood Town Hall, large palm trees, a stand of plane trees affording beautiful shade, a much-loved playground with a flying fox, much-used barbecues, a basket ball hoop, and picnic tables. Hang out there on a Sunday afternoon and you will quickly get to know the locals. It has a village square feel, bordered on three sides by well preserved Victorian cottage streetscapes. It also houses the maternal child health service.
The photos of the Yarra and environs on the web advertising for 41-43 Raphael Street are of the walking trails along the opposite bank of the Yarra from the Collingwood Children’s Farm (hastily snapped on my Iphone while out jogging).
These walking tracks are accessed from what our kids call ‘the big park’ at the end of Gipps Street just beyond the wonderful Salvation Army super-op-shop, 450 m away, and across the bridge over the Yarra. Crossing this bridge is like being in the countryside all of a sudden. In fact, it is Yarra Bend Park (photos here), the largest tract of natural bushland in Melbourne’s inner city: 220 ha through which 12 loopy km of the Yarra flows.
You can see why it feels like this from this aerial image which shows a black line running, for some reason, through the little park and Victoria Park. In the middle of the photo on the left bank of the river is the Children’s Farm and Convent precinct. You can just see the bridge at the end of Gipps St pricking the thumb of the park pointing leftwards. The right-most of the three upward pointing fingers is Galatea Point: beautiful walking which hardly anyone other than this Abbotsford enthusiast knows about (map here). The top right is the Studley Park Golf Course.
Yarra Bend Park has its own Parks Victoria rangers station. No other Australian capital city apart from Canberra, has this idyll 4 km from the CBD. It’s 2/3 the size of Central Park, twice as beautiful, and though it’s in Kew, the best bits are got to from Abbotsford.
It is home to the Studley Park Boat House (1.9 km away, where you can get married like my sister, hire a row boat, feed the ducks, and eat well), the Fairfield Boat House (3.6 km away: great live music in the nearby amphitheatre, lovely cafe), and the Yarra Bend Golf Course (and mini golf) with its endearing stone cafe:
It also houses the Boulevard Restaurant, the Deep Rock Swimming and Lifesaving Club, Dight’s Falls (and its associated 4.5 km walking trail), and what must be Australia’s most urban vineyard, Studley Park Vineyard.
It is also home to 20,000 flying foxes (and an associated wetlands boardwalk) which flap across the dusk sky over Raphael Street in their thousands every night, and cool birds like Eastern Rosellas, owls, yellow-tailed black cockatoos, and flame robins.
Before the bridge to the big park, on the near bank of the Yarra, is the away-from-the-city section of the Yarra Bike Path, to Alphington, Fairfield, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Westerfolds Park, Monstalvat and Eltham.) You can wander along there through the Children’s Farm and up to Fairfield, via the more frequented side of Dight’s Falls. It’s perfectly safe for pedestrians.
Once you’re across the bridge in the big park, you can continue straight ahead to the Yarra Boulevard at the top of the park, the best and safest road cycling in Melbourne (map here): 6 km of intersection-free panoramic riverside road, neither flat nor unbearably hilly, and almost no vehicular traffic. Many Melbournians are ignorant of its very existence but it’s a beautiful way to get from Abbotsford to Fairfield and Alphington by bike or by car (by car you enter off Studley Park Road). To the ends and back is 12 km, a perfect regular bike ride to keep you fit. But you can truncate it by only going to one end and back, since you start somewhere in the middle.
It is also from the Yarra Boulevard that you join the Yarra bike path to the city via Hawthorn. Or to put it another way, the Yarra bike path includes a stretch of the Boulevard just after the Gipps Street bridge.
The Merri Creek Bike Path to CERES and beyond to Coburg is accessed just a little way up the Yarra trail in the away-from-the-city direction, at Dight’s Falls (see the map). Here’s a photo from a bloke who blogged his tandem ride from Eltham into town:
It is a beautiful ride on bike tracks all the way to the East Brunswick restaurants of northern Lygon Street.
From the Merri trail, you can access the Capital City Trail at Rushall Station (3.2 km away) and ride to the Zoo. Once you work out the trails (so much easier these days with maps on your phone), you can ride all over the city without using roads.
The ‘big park’ and its fortress-like play equipment is a two minute jog away. It is beautiful and little-known, great for kids, walkers, mountain bikers, cyclists, joggers, and dogs alike. It’s a great place to lie on the grass and read a book, and there are picturesque picnic tables. It is actually F.A. Andrews Reserve, a part of Yarra Bend Park, and it is a brilliant alternative to the little park for children’s birthday parties (you drive there in that scenario). ‘Big park or little park?’ is always the question in our household.
Bring your visitors from Sydney (or Fitzroy for that matter) on this walk and they’ll be gobsmacked. Mountain bikers like it too.
If, from the big park, you follow the Yarra to the right, you walk through bushland trails along high escarpments over a part of the Yarra which most Melburnians have never seen, opposite the Carlton & United Breweries (which makes nearly half a billion litres of beer a year and does tours), past Studley Park Vineyard and you end up at Ikea. Back home then on Victoria Street (by tram if you’re flagging) with a bowl of Pho if the mood takes you.
In terms of sporting facilities, the community facility at Victoria Park with a thriving Auskick and Milo Cricket community has already been mentioned. There’s a serious cricket club at Ramsden Street and many local kids play at Edinburgh Cricket Club in Ediburgh Gardens. I doubt that venues to stand around watching your kids play sport get much better in Melbourne than the Edinburgh / Victoria Park combo. Swimming lessons are at the indoor pool just up Hoddle Street, with an excellent gym, all run by Yarra Council. There’s horse riding for local kids only at the Children’s Farm.