History Mystery Monday: the Mystery of an Essendon Park in Broadmeadows

Image credit: Julia Marshall, Napier Park, Strathmore, December 2018

In all of Melbourne, Strathmore’s Napier Park is unique. It isn’t a huge park, but it is unusual – a pocket of tranquil bushland, with native grasses and river red gums and sometimes (after enough rain) ever a small watercourse – all on land that was never cleared or farmed after European settlement. And all tucked unexpectedly amongst surburbia.

The park owes its existence to a man ahead of his time. Theodore Napier was the son of a Scottish builder, Thomas Napier, who’d bought 100 acres in the area way back in 1845 – the very year Theodore was born. Seventy-five years later Theodore, who had inherited the land from his father, and who had always loved the native vegetation, wanted to gift 10 acres to the community as a park. He offered it to the City of Broadmeadows, but they rejected his conditions about retaining the natural character of the land.

As the land happened to be right on the border with the City of Essendon, Napier offered City of Essendon the 10 acres, and they agreed to his conditions. So in August 1920 Napier bequeathed to Essendon the land, originally known as Northern Park. Until 1979 when Strathmore was annexed into Essendon it was a strange anomaly – a park within the borders of City of Broadmeadows, but owned by Essendon.

For almost one hundred years now the community has been able to enjoy this rare oasis of native vegetation thanks to Napier’s radical, unusual and generous gift.

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