![AFL Grand Final 2010 on the Melbourne Cricket Ground](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/AFL_Grand_Final_2010_on_the_Melbourne_Cricket_Ground.jpg)
Yarra Park (35.469 hectares) is part of the
Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Precinct
The Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Precinct is a series of sports stadiums and venues, located in Melbourne, Victoria, in Australia. The precinct is situated around 3 km east of the Melbourne city centre, located in suburbs of Melbourn ...
, the premier sporting precinct of
Victoria, Australia
Victoria is a state in southeastern Australia. It is the second-smallest state with a land area of , the second most populated state (after New South Wales) with a population of over 6.5 million, and the most densely populated state in Au ...
. Located in Yarra Park is the
Melbourne Cricket Ground
The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), also known locally as "The 'G", is an Australian sports stadium located in Yarra Park, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Victoria. Founded and managed by the Melbourne Cricket Club, it is the largest stadiu ...
(MCG) and numerous sporting fields and ovals, including the associated sporting complexes of
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
and
Olympic
Olympic or Olympics may refer to
Sports
Competitions
* Olympic Games, international multi-sport event held since 1896
** Summer Olympic Games
** Winter Olympic Games
* Ancient Olympic Games, ancient multi-sport event held in Olympia, Greece b ...
Parks. The park and sporting facilities are located in the inner-suburb of
East Melbourne
East Melbourne is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia, east of Melbourne's Melbourne central business district, Central Business District, located within the City of Melbourne Local government areas of ...
. In the late 1850s, many of the
earliest games of Australian rules football were played at Yarra Park, which was known at the time as the Richmond Paddock.
Tree-lined paths run parallel to
Punt Road
Hoddle Highway is an urban highway in Melbourne linking CityLink and the Eastern Freeway, itself a sub-section of Hoddle Main Road. Both these names are not widely known to most drivers, as the entire allocation is still best known as by the n ...
and Swan Street, and criss-cross the park. Some of the lawns are used for parking for sporting events. Three footbridges allow pedestrians and cyclists to cross the railway lines to the different sporting venues and easy access to the
Yarra River Trail
__NOTOC__
The Yarra Trail is a shared use path for cyclists and pedestrians, which follows the Yarra River through the north eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
The trail follows the river from near its mouth, through the city a ...
.
Around the MCG are sculptures of Australian sporting heroes including: Australian rules footballers
Ron Barassi
Ronald Dale Barassi Jr. (born 27 February 1936) is a former Australian rules footballer, coach and media personality. Regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of the game, Barassi was the first player to be inaugurated into ...
and
Dick Reynolds
Richard Sylvannus Reynolds (20 June 1915 – 2 September 2002) was an Australian rules footballer who played for the Essendon Football Club in the Victorian Football League (VFL).
Reynolds is one of four footballers to have won three Brownlow ...
; cricketers
Donald Bradman and
Keith Miller
Keith Ross Miller (28 November 1919 – 11 October 2004) was an Australian Test cricketer and a Royal Australian Air Force pilot during World War II. Miller is widely regarded as Australia's greatest ever all-rounder. His ability, irreverent m ...
; and athlete
Betty Cuthbert
Elizabeth Alyse Cuthbert, (20 April 1938 – 6 August 2017) was an Australian athlete and a four-time Olympic champion. She was nicknamed Australia's "Golden Girl". During her career, she set world records for 60 metres, 100 yards, 200 metres ...
. Nearby is an old eucalyptus
scar tree which shows a big scar caused by harvesting of bark for a canoe by the original inhabitants of the Yarra River Valley, the
Wurundjeri
The Wurundjeri people are an Australian Aboriginal people of the Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin nation. They are the Traditional Owners of the Birrarung (Yarra River) Valley, covering much of the present location of Narrm (Melbourn ...
people of the
Kulin nation
The Kulin nation is an alliance of five Aboriginal nations in south central Victoria, Australia. Their collective territory extends around Port Phillip and Western Port, up into the Great Dividing Range and the Loddon and Goulburn River valley ...
.
The adjacent
Punt Road Oval
Punt Road Oval, also known by naming rights sponsorship as the Swinburne Centre, is an Australian rules football ground and former cricket oval located within the Yarra Park precinct of East Melbourne, Victoria, situated a few hundred metres to ...
, home of the
Richmond Football Club
The Richmond Football Club, nicknamed the Tigers, is an Australian rules football team playing in the Australian Football League (AFL). Between its inception in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond in 1885 and 1907, the club competed in the Victo ...
features a statue of Tiger legend
Jack Dyer
John Raymond Dyer Sr. OAM (15 November 1913 – 23 August 2003), nicknamed Captain Blood, was an Australian rules footballer who played for the Richmond Football Club in the Victorian Football League (VFL) between 1931 and 1949. One of the ga ...
.
History
![Yarra Park (500966539)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Yarra_Park_%28500966539%29.jpg)
In 1856, Victorian Governor
Charles La Trobe
Charles la Trobe, CB (20 March 18014 December 1875), commonly Latrobe, was appointed in 1839 superintendent of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales and, after the establishment in 1851 of the colony of Victoria (now a state of Australi ...
proclaimed 81 hectares of parkland, extending from Punt Road to
Swanston Street
Swanston Street is a major thoroughfare in the centre of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It is one of the main streets of the Melbourne central business district and was laid out in 1837 as part of the original Hoddle Grid. The street vertically ...
, and from Wellington Parade to the
Yarra River
The Yarra River or historically, the Yarra Yarra River, (Kulin languages: ''Berrern'', ''Birr-arrung'', ''Bay-ray-rung'', ''Birarang'', ''Birrarung'', and ''Wongete'') is a perennial river in south-central Victoria, Australia.
The lower stre ...
. Initially the area was also used as police paddocks for the agistment of police horses.
The earliest recorded matches of
Australian rules football
Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...
were played at the Richmond Paddock in 1858. ''
The Argus'' wrote the following year: "Football, like
cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...
, has become an institution ... expect to see every available portion of Richmond Paddock, and other 'lungs of the city', dotted by animated groups in full pursuit of the leathern spheroid." It remained an important site for the sport until the MCG and other cricket grounds were opened for football in the late 1870s.
By the 1860s five recreational ovals were marked out: the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Richmond Cricket Ground, East Melbourne Cricket Club ovals (two), and an oval in Gosch's Paddock, south of Swan Street. In the southern section of the park land was set aside for the
Friendly Society
A friendly society (sometimes called a benefit society, mutual aid society, benevolent society, fraternal organization or ROSCA) is a mutual association for the purposes of insurance, pensions, savings or cooperative banking. It is a mutual org ...
's Gardens (now Olympic Park), and the Scotch College oval. In 1874 Yarra Park Primary School was opened in the north east corner of the park. A housing subdivision was excised from the park in 1881.
Since this time major excisions have been made for Melbourne's eastern and southeastern rail lines, the
Hurstbridge railway line
The Hurstbridge railway line is a commuter rail passenger train service in Melbourne, Australia. It shares tracks with the Mernda railway line until Clifton Hill, then heads in a north-east direction through the cities of Yarra, Darebin and ...
,
Olympic Park Sporting Complex,
Rod Laver Arena
Rod Laver Arena is a multipurpose arena located within Melbourne Park, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The arena is the main venue for the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tennis tournament of the calendar year.
History
Replacing the ...
in Melbourne Park's National Tennis Centre. However, Gosch's Paddock still links Yarra Park to the Yarra River at the Morrell Bridge for cyclists and pedestrians.
In 2007, The Government Introduced the 'Melbourne Cricket Ground and Yarra Park Amendment Bill'.
Sports Minister
James Merlino
James Anthony Merlino (born 19 August 1972) is an Australian retired politician who served as the member for Monbulk in the Victorian Legislative Assembly, as a member of the Labor Party. He served as Deputy Premier of Victoria and Minister ...
told Parliament ‘The main focus of the bill, is to transfer responsibility for Yarra Park from the City of Melbourne to the Melbourne Cricket Ground Trust.’
The site is listed on the
Victorian Heritage Register
The Victorian Heritage Register (VHR) lists places deemed to be of cultural heritage significance to the State of Victoria, Australia. It has statutory weight under the Heritage Act 2017. The Minister for Planning is the responsible Minister. H ...
.
Since 2013, The
Melbourne Football Club
The Melbourne Football Club, nicknamed the Demons, is a professional Australian rules football club that competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's elite competition. It is based in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, ...
in the
Australian Football League
The Australian Football League (AFL) is the only fully professional competition of Australian rules football. Through the AFL Commission, the AFL also serves as the sport's governing body and is responsible for controlling the laws of the gam ...
(AFL) uses the park as their outdoor training ground. In August 2021, The Melbourne Football Club announced that The oval will be upgraded and redeveloped in the 2021/22 off-season to increase the dimensions to better match the measurements of the
MCG
The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), also known locally as "The 'G", is an Australian sports stadium located in Yarra Park, Melbourne, Victoria. Founded and managed by the Melbourne Cricket Club, it is the largest stadium in the Southern Hem ...
and
Docklands Stadium
Docklands Stadium, also currently known by naming rights sponsorship as Marvel Stadium, is a multi-purpose sports and entertainment stadium in the Docklands area of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Construction started in October 1997 and was ...
. Redevelopment of Goschs Paddock oval commenced on 5 December 2021.
References
External links
Melbourne City Council - Yarra ParkMapYarra Park Adventure TourYarra Park Association
{{coord, -37.8180437, 144.9852312, format=dms, display=title, type:landmark_region:AU-VIC
Parks in Melbourne
Heritage sites in Melbourne
East Melbourne, Victoria