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 th...