Fitzroy Gardens

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  • Address
    btwn Wellington Pde, Clarendon, Lansdowne & Albert Sts, Fitzroy
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Lonely Planet review

The city drops away suddenly just east of Spring St, giving way to Melbourne's beautiful backyard, the Fitzroy Gardens. The stately avenues lined with English elms, flowerbeds tucked in neatly, expansive lawns and trickling creek are a short stroll from town. At weekends, a cavalcade of wedding photographers and stretched cars deliver the princesses-for-a-day to document their white gowns and princes.

The path system, which gives structure to the gardens, was first contrived as an elaborate symmetrical design that was deemed inappropriate for such a large site. It was replaced with the existing layout, which developed by happenstance. The goal was to provide path access to the creek in the centre of the gardens. The unimaginative process of working in from each corner after installing the cross-axis led to the design 'accidentally' resembling the Union Jack. There are no red, white and blue flowerbeds, so we'll have to believe the patriotic design was unplanned.

Cooks' Cottage (tel: 9419 4677; www.cookscottage.com.au; adult/child/family around A$4 /around A$2 /around A$11 ; - ) is a tad dubious in trumpeting the Cook name; it's almost certain that he visited the place - it being the former Yorkshire home of the distinguished English navigator's parents. It was dismantled, shipped to Melbourne in 253 packing cases and reconstructed in 1934. The cottage is furnished and decorated as it would have been around 1750, with representative handmade furniture and period fittings. There is also an exhibit on Captain James Cook's life and achievements during his great exploratory voyages of the southern hemisphere.

In the centre of the gardens is the model Tudor village. A well-meaning gift from a 77-year-old hobbyist in London, the collection of little houses is Edgar Wilson's way of saying thanks for sending food to Britain during WWII. Next door is writer Ola Cohn's carved Fairies' Tree. Efforts to preserve the 300-year-old stump, carved in 1932 with fairies, pixies, kangaroos, emus and possums, include dissuading young hopefuls from leaving notes to fairies in the tree's hollows. A mummified possum, about 40 years old, was discovered in the stump during earlier preservation attempts. A warning from the fairies?

In the northwestern corner of the gardens is the People's Path - a circular path paved with 10,000 individually engraved bricks. The Conservatory (; - ), opened in 1930, contains five different floral displays each year.