Moonee Valley Family & Local History Blog

Once again, we find ourselves spending more time at home and many of us are getting re-acquainted with our local streets on our daily walks. If you’ve walked the same path every day and are looking for a way to change up your walks around your neighbourhood, we’ve got you covered! Your local Community Heritage librarians have put together self-guided history walks for four neighbourhoods in Moonee Valley, which you can access through our library catalogue . The walks include a stroll along the river in Aberfeldie, through Queens Park in Moonee Ponds, and around the streets of Niddrie and Strathmore. If these areas fall within your 5km radius, we invite you to take a (safe and socially distant) winter walk and visit points of historical interest in your area- you might even learn some fun local trivia tidbits! The Moonee Ponds Creek flooding in 1963 near Wallace Crescent in Strathmore. This view looks east towards Pascoe Vale South. (Photograph courtesy of Moonee Valley Libraries) Foll...

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 th...