Epalock Crescent, St Albans Victoria 2011

I agree there might be some controversy over whether this is a true internal reserve as previously defined on this blog, and it occurs to me that perhaps the best way of defining the form is to create a formula based on a ratio of street frontage to residential allotment border - something like 5%? In this case the unnamed reserve at Epalock Crescent, St Albans is an unusual strip of parkland the north end of which features a child care centre and a car park (so, not actually direct street frontage, but near enough) and entry to eight more cul-de-sac streets along its boundary. See the google map here.

If you look closely at the image above you will see that on my visit to this space (on the afternoon of 2 January, 2011) two small boys were playing with a scooter right at the edge of the park, close to the carpark. It was strange enough that they were unwilling to go further into the park space, but particularly so as there was a brand new set of play equipment close by.



The park features a series of pathway arcs between the cul-de-sac entries (these must be very new as neither they, nor the play equipment, are in the satellite photograph on google maps at time of writing). This image is from close to the Cairn Close side of the reserve looking south-east.


This tree is at the southern end of the reserve.

More directly west of the Cairn Close location.

Despite the impression these photographs give, in fact the reserve seems to be quite well-used, and indeed during my brief time there (ten minutes), two people walking babies in prams, a woman walking a dog, a man walking between cul-de-sacs and the two unsupervised small boys above were all present.

Plainly also there had been fireworks let off in the reserve two days previously for New Years' celebrations, as spent fireworks were all over the ground (international readers note: these are actually illegal in Victoria except in rare sanctioned circumstances). There were also a number of empty dog food cans, which is unusual, though it occurred to me that these might have been used to launch fireworks...