Royal Park offers a range of experiences for visitors, from diverse sport fields, to relaxing in nature. Visitation and broad use is supported by the amenities within the park. The term ‘amenities’ describes things like seats, drink fountains, bins, public toilets, lighting, shelters and picnic and barbecue areas. There are many such amenities to support visitation in Royal Park, and most areas of the park have at least one barbecue and picnic area, although the amenities provided at each is not consistent. For example, some picnic areas do not include a drinking fountain and some are quite a distance from the nearest public toilet.

In order to understand more about how women and girls experience Royal Park, we undertook community safety audits in early 2023. This process identified ‘hot spots’ where participants identified amenity and safety concerns, which were then further explored in workshops. The insights and possible solutions that were workshopped have deepened our understanding of how to best support a diverse range of visitor experiences as part of the master plan refresh.

In talking about amenity and safety in Royal Park, we often refer to precincts to help clarify the area we’re referring to. These precincts, shown in the map below, are mostly defined by the physical barriers in the park. It remains a principle that the whole of Royal Park will be planned and designed according to the landscape characters we talked about in Theme 4, so that the whole park feels like one park, but looking at precincts helps us to understand where there might be gaps in the provision of amenities for those who only use one area of the park.

Royal Park’s size and the physical separations within it mean that some visitors only visit certain precincts and may not be aware of how much there is to do and see in other areas. We understand that visitors tend to stay in the same area of the park and this seems to relate to where they live or where they entered the park. For example, residents of North Melbourne tend to enter from Flemington Road and use the southern area of Royal Park, including the grassland circle, and don’t cross to the north of Macarthur Road / Elliott Avenue as often.

We also understand that some people’s experience of the park is limited by safety concerns; people may avoid some areas at certain times of day or altogether, or only feel comfortable visiting when they’re in a group.