Four parks within reach of Heatherton Park

Parks Victoria’s visitor guide gives Karkarook Park as 40 hectares of parkland, revegetated with indigenous plants, with wetlands that filter storm water before it flows into Port Phillip.

The name is Aboriginal, and the park’s own visitor guide gives it as “a sandy place”; the guide adds that the area around it would have been a rich source of food for Aboriginal people.

After European settlement the same ground was used for flood retarding, market gardens and horse agistment, and the park records that it was mined for sand through a partnership between Parks Victoria, Boral, Readymix and the community before it became the park it is now.

Karkarook Park is part of an Aboriginal cultural landscape in the traditional Country of the Bunurong People.

The 15 hectare lake was a sand mine before it was a lake. Parks Victoria allows canoes, kayaks and sailing on it and no powered vessels, and records that it is a refuge for water birds and home to varieties of fish.

A 6 kilometre network of trails runs through the park. The Lake Trail goes all the way around the lake, and the visitor guide maps it as a 2 kilometre circuit shared by walkers, cyclists, joggers and dogs on leads.

The Wetlands Trail is the walk the park points to for birdlife. The visitor guide gives it as 1.4 kilometres, running around the perimeter of the wetlands and through the middle of them.

The Dragonfly Picnic Area has a playground and an observation tower looking over the lake, with electric barbecues, picnic tables both under cover and in the open, and toilets.

The visitor guide adds the Dragon Fly and She-oak picnic grounds, where the park lists free electric barbecues, picnic tables and shelters, toilets and a playground.

The park is on Warrigal Road, Moorabbin, at the corner of Warrigal Road and Fairchild Street, in the middle of an industrial and commercial area.

Parks Victoria assessed the park for accessibility in February 2021 and publishes what it found about the picnic facilities, the walks, the toilets and the car parking.

Its hours are simple ones: the vehicle gates to the park are open between dawn and dusk all year round, and pedestrian access is always available.

Parks Victoria calls Braeside Park an oasis of parkland nestled amongst golf courses, urban development and busy roads.

Before the park, the area was used by Aboriginal people for hunting, camping and gathering food, and later for grazing, market gardens and a sewage treatment plant.

Twelve kilometres of meandering multi-purpose trails cross the park, and one of them is the historic race course trail, where the park says Phar Lap’s hooves pounded the turf.

More than 235 bird species have been recorded in the park, among them the New Holland Honeyeater, the Blue-billed Duck and Latham’s Snipe, and the southern part of the wetlands track is only accessible in summer.

Braeside Park is open from sunrise to sunset, and the Governor Road entrance closes at 4pm daily.

Spring Road Reserve was a landfill in Dingley Village and is now a link in Kingston’s Chain of Parks, close to Westall Road and the Dingley Village shops.

In the record of what the council has done for the chain since it adopted its first green wedge plan, the 2023 plan lists the opening of the 37 hectare Spring Road Reserve in Dingley Village, a former landfill, in 2016, with a path network through it, new landscaping and dog off-leash areas. The reserve’s own page gives it as 38 hectares.

Its page lists wide green open space, wetlands, walking trails, seating and a fenced dog park where dogs may run off the leash, and records that the wetlands are home to rare bird and frog species.

Kingston's page for the reserve records that the council adopted its masterplan in April 2024, after consulting the community.

Elder Street South Reserve was a landfill, and the council’s page describes the 4 hectares it takes up now as parkland that expands the Chain of Parks.

In the record of what the council has done for the chain since it adopted its first green wedge plan, the 2023 plan has work beginning on the reserve in late 2020, gives it as 4.3 hectares, and describes it as a heavily landscaped new park for Clarinda, on a former landfill site.

The council’s Q4 2024-25 performance report records the Elder Street and Victory Road landfill sites rehabilitated and open to the public for passive open space.

The reserve has outdoor exercise equipment in an activity zone and a court for several sports, paths shared by pedestrians and cyclists, and a nature play area the council calls an adventure woodland.

Among its facilities are picnic areas, seating, a shelter, a toilet and water, and a car park off Elder Street South.

Set the four side by side and the pattern of the sandbelt shows: three of them were dug or filled ground before they were parks, and each one carries what its own authority put there.

Heatherton Park itself sits in this company of parks, and what stands in it is set out in the guide to the park as it is today.