early morning fairview park and surrounds

This morning Perry and I got up early, as it was going to be a hot day, and we wanted to be active before it was too hot to be active. 

Personally I find the best excursions are where we're not actually sure where we're going to end up and the decision to go to Fairview Park, Hawthorn was a thoroughly random one. I think the last time I was in Fairview Park - and this is just a guess based on a very vague memory - was around 1983 i.e. after I finished high school and before I moved to Sydney. In any case I had definitely been there before and it intrigued me in some way or other but not enough to ever do anything else about the intriguedness. Or even really think about it much at all in the intervening 40 years. 

Yet, when I got back there it was actually really great:

So apparently it was mainly landscaped and delineated by the Hawthorn council in the early1930s primarily from a piece of land that was known as/contained the Hawthorn Tea Gardens. There's a fair bit of information on it here (pp. 15-16 I think) though i have to admit this document is unusual in that the person who wrote it seems to have failed to notice/care that their history is basically notes in parts. Never mind. It's implied that the park was created in 1935 but there is an article in the Age for 26 October 1934 p. 7 relating to major flooding of the Yarra which remarks that 'a considerable amount of money' had been recently spent on 'forming and equipping' Fairview Park which was at that time completely underwater. So it predates 1935 but not by much I'm going to guess. 

So when you enter from Riversdale Road, you come down steep steps presented ornately and come to what is, I suppose, a bridge over a small creek (above) which has presumably done its time collecting street runoff for a while by the time it sees daylight. 

This (above) is one of the apartment blocks, probably c. 1935, that overlooks the park. 

Here above is a piece of unsympathetic white plastic pipe across the creek - don't know what this would be doing but it's doing it. 

Small paths, etc in the more leafy part of the Riversdale Road side of the park, before it gets to big open spaces (and then the river). 

More apartments, above, these ones much more recent and not bashful about craning to get a 'fair view'. The document linked earlier seems to imply in its delightfully fractured way that these were built on old tramway land. 

Creek/drain again

I think this above is the foliage around the river, but to be honest I don't remember taking this picture. I did though. 

Above: The open space. It's really good. It's certainly very open and spacious. I have nothing to say about it obviously. 

On leaving Fairview Park we encountered this very nice construction (above and below). So, as mentioned Fairview Park and a lot of the area around it has on occasion (I'm going to guess every 40-50 years since invasion) been flooded considerably, and so I guess there are requirements if you want to build a house near the river you have to do it on stilts. This one is really a one-storey house elevated, I think, with a garage underneath. 

Something like that anyway. We didn't knock on the door to find out, or to thank them for the water. 

Some kind of event going on in this extra little parklet (above) - I can't imagine what or why. I mean there was no-one there at this time (6:30 am-ish) so this was definitely set up the day before. 

This, above, won't mean much to you if you don't know Hawthorn (and I don't know this part of Hawthorn at all well) but this house struck me as being exceptionally humble for its surrounds. I mean it's not insubstantial, but nor is it large really or even mega-renovated like many houses of its generation have been, with twice as much house added at the back etc etc. I just thought that was interesting, but sorry, I now realise it wasn't. 

Above: Perry in the river. 

Above: A house we saw, which was exciting. 

Above: This is just dregsy. I wonder if the neighbours wring their hands over it. 

Above: These flats are not attractive. See the city in the background? That's the apple stretching and yawning. Yeah, Melbourne is known as the big apple. 

Above: This is the sort of house you'd expect to see in Hawthorn. I like it a lot, I'd love to see the inside. 

Above: I love this too - it's an addition to a Victorian home on Riversdale Road. Obviously someone forty plus years ago saw they had the possibility of an amazing view of the apple. 

These flats just look cool don't they. 

Above you see the backs of them. I guess the view here is of the river, except the lower ones which have a view of the trees grown in the park to block them. I do like these utterly utilitarian back verandahs etc - seems people put their dryers on them and so on. 

Finally, just as we get back to the car, another home in Riversdale Court which is one of those very stupid cul-de-sac streets that go forever and go very close to Fairview Park but obviously a decision was made that it would never do to allow a walkway through to the park. 

All in all, a successful enterprise. 10/10 would do again.