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Bicentennial Park Belvedere: The Homebush Abattoir & industrial site was first partially ‘remediated’ & redeveloped for the 1988 Bicentennial (200 yearssince European settlement in Australia), which of course started in Sydney in the scorching midsummer of January 1788. The park here, to the west of the Central Business District where the population has grown, now sprawling out from the barrier of the southern Pacific Ocean in the East, is a 20th Century match to Centennial Park which was constructed, then centrally, in the Eastern Suburbs in 1888. It is between the main western railway line through the suburb of Concord West & the main Olympic site.
Much of it is restored wetlands — mangroves, marshes, mudflats, reedbeds — which, once plentiful around the lavishly indented & stream-watered (but sandy-soiled) river valley that provided the toehold for the English, were prime sites for ‘reclamation’ by dumping unwanted excvated soil & rock (fill) as well as garbage. Seen as ‘useless’, since the settlers didn’t eat or use their plants, nor hunted the crabs, birds & other wildlife there; their importance in the breeding cycle of our still delicious fish & prawns, in slowing, filtering & cleaning the run-off & through-flowing water as well as their overall contribution to enviromental infrastructure was either unknown or ignored. In remediation clay & ‘clean fill’ was laid over the area to help seal away the toxic wastes which were dumped here over decades from both local & distant industrial sites. Contaminated soil from the Olympic site was also mounded up here & covered over.
Here, at a high point along the main path marked by refreshing — tho’ undrinkable — fountains & not far from some shelters for rest & eating, is “The Belvedere”, a modern-styled viewing tower. (There is a panorama of this view, but this site concentrates on images with Christopher.) Here you see him caught admiring the spring-green parkland — or perhaps the young women on the path or those climbing the tower?