Sydney Park is a large recreational area in the inner-city area of Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

, New South Wales

New South Wales

New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. The parkland is located in the suburb of St Peters

St Peters, New South Wales

St Peters is a suburb in the inner west of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. St Peters is located 7 kilometres south of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of Marrickville Council.-History:...

, sitting along the borders of Alexandria

Alexandria, New South Wales

Alexandria is an inner-city suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Alexandria is located 4 kilometres south of the Sydney central business district and is part of the local government area of the City of Sydney...

, Newtown

Newtown, New South Wales

Newtown, a suburb of Sydney's inner west is located approximately four kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, straddling the local government areas of the City of Sydney and Marrickville Council in the state of New South Wales, Australia....

  and Erskineville

Erskineville, New South Wales

Erskineville is an inner-city suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Erskineville is located about 3 kilometres south of the Sydney central business district and is part of the local government area of the City of Sydney...

.

Sydney Park is forty-four 44 hectares (109 acres) in area, which makes it the third largest park in inner-city Sydney. The park comprises large open recreation spaces with distinctive hills that provide 360 degree views over Sydney, a children's playground, wetlands, a sports oval (Alan Davidson Oval), a children's bicycle track, sculptures and a heritage area featuring the remains of the brickworks that formerly occupied part of the site.

History

Prior to European occupation, the north-western part of the present park area would have been a forest of turpentine and ironbark trees, grading down towards the south-eastern area, situated on Botany Sands, which would have been swamp, marsh and heathland associated with the waterway that became known as Shea’s Creek. The woodland area was first cleared by Thomas Smyth, a marine sergeant with the First Fleet

First Fleet

The First Fleet is the name given to the eleven ships which sailed from Great Britain on 13 May 1787 with about 1,487 people, including 778 convicts , to establish the first European colony in Australia, in the region which Captain Cook had named New South Wales. The fleet was led by Captain ...

, who planted fruit trees and grain crops.

The north-west part of the park is situated over a bed of Wianamatta shale

Wianamatta shale

Wianamatta Shale is the uppermost outcropping unit in the Sydney Basin in New South Wales, Australia. It dates from the Triassic Period and generally comprises fine grained sedimentary rocks such as shales and laminites with less common sandstone units...

 which became a valuable source of brick-making clay. Brick manufacture on the site was a major industry by the 1870s when machine manufacture was introduced. Bricks made here were widely used around Sydney’s suburbs for more than 100 years and the first batch of machine-made bricks was used for the construction of the Farmers’ Building on the corner of Market Street, Sydney

Market Street, Sydney

Market Street is a cross street in the Central Business District of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It runs from Sussex Street near Darling Harbour in the west, to Elizabeth Street at St. James railway station in the east....

. Josiah Gentle opened the Bedford Brickworks in 1893; this was taken over by Austral Bricks in 1933 and that company operated the site until the brickworks closed in 1970. Other parts of the site were used for a variety of industrial purposes including manufacturing, warehousing and gas storage.

From 1948 to 1976 the massive clay pits that had been excavated were used as a municipal waste tip. After the closure of the tip, the area was reclaimed by placing layers of soil and building rubble over the refuse dump to create the present parkland profile.

Art and heritage

Sydney Park features public sculpture including Michael Snape's "The Trail" 1990 which is displayed on top of the hill in the north-western corner of the park, the corner opposite to St Peters railway station. This corner, where King Street, Newtown turns into the Princes Highway

Princes Highway

The Princes Highway extends from Sydney to Port Augusta via the coast through the states of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, a distance of 1941 km or 1898 km via the former alignments of the highway ....

, features the remains of the chimneys and brick kilns from the old brickworks site. These chimneys have been kept as heritage items and are a dominating feature of this area.

Sports and recreation

The Alan Davidson Oval is located in the northern section of the park. The oval is used for Cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 and Australian rules football

Australian rules football

Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, also called football, Aussie rules or footy is a sport played between two teams of 22 players on either...

. It is the home ground of The Newtown Swans Junior Australian rules football team.

Culture and events

Sydney Park has played an important role in various youth subcultures since its redevelopment - generally without official approval. Throughout the 1990s and to the present day the park is used reasonably regularly for the 'Punks Picnic' - a gathering initially of anarcho-punk

Anarcho-punk

Anarcho-punk is punk rock that promotes anarchism. The term anarcho-punk is sometimes applied exclusively to bands that were part of the original anarcho-punk movement in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s and early 1980s...

s from Newtown and neighbouring suburbs. From 1992 to 1994 the park was also used by the Vibe Tribe for a series of free open-air rave

Rave

Rave, rave dance, and rave party are parties that originated mostly from acid house parties, which featured fast-paced electronic music and light shows. At these parties people dance and socialize to dance music played by disc jockeys and occasionally live performers...

 parties that formed an important part of the Sydney electronic music scene throughout the 1990s. The last of these Freequency was violently shut down by over 40 riot police. Since then, in an effort to avoid such "anti-social behaviour" and illegal gatherings, the South Sydney Council (and now City of Sydney Council) has allowed and promoted community arts festivals on the site. In recent years, the park has become home to Sydney's Earthdance

Earthdance

Earthdance is the world's largest synchronized music and dance festival for peace. Taking place annually in over 300 locations and 60 countries, Earthdance joins participants worldwide in a synchronized Prayer for Peace...

 event, joining simultaneous dance parties in more than 50 countries to mark the International Day of Peace each September. The park has also become the host for the touring Soundwave Festival

Soundwave Festival

Soundwave Festival, held every year at the Scarborough Spa Ocean Room, Scarborough, UK, is a music and arts festival created by the DIY Collective, a group of young people from around the Scarborough area. It was first held in 1999 on South Bay Beach, Scarborough and was moved to the Spa Complex...

 having its first show there in 2007 and returning in 2008.

Flora and fauna

The park area has been extensively replanted with a variety of native trees and shrubs. Stormwater retention ponds constructed in the eastern section of the site have been transformed into wetland habitats, partially recreating the original character of the eastern part of the site, and this has attracted a wide variety of bird and animal life including Dusky Moorhen

Dusky Moorhen

The Dusky Moorhen is a bird in the rail family. It occurs in Australia, New Guinea, and Indonesia.The New Guinea birds are smaller, at 25-32 cm in length, than the Australian race...

s, Australian Magpie

Australian Magpie

The Australian Magpie is a medium-sized black and white passerine bird native to Australia and southern New Guinea. A member of the Artamidae, it is closely related to the butcherbirds...

s and Pelicans

Australian Pelican

The Australian Pelican is a large water bird, widespread on the inland and coastal waters of Australia and New Guinea, also in Fiji, parts of Indonesia and as a vagrant to New Zealand.-Taxonomy:...

.

Photographs