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What you need to know
Rosehill Park master plan
Rosehill Park
Rosehill Park is a fantastic destination and much-loved parkland for locals and visitors. It has plenty of open space perfect for playing footy or soccer, as well as barbeque facilities, a playground and a popular skatepark.
It now also features an entirely new wetland!
Moonee Valley is a densely populated and established municipality with limited open space opportunities, particularly to implement large scale Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) projects.
The role of green healthy public open spaces is incredibly important for local residents. To date, Rosehill Park has been quite a dry arid parkland with no irrigation. The new wetland will now provide a sustainable irrigation source for the grassed oval area, as well as an enriched ecological sanctuary for local wildlife. You can read more about how it works here. The wetland and boardwalk bridge will provide many environmental, health and social benefits for local residents.
A long-term plan was created to guide improvements to Rosehill Park. It was endorsed by Council on 23 August 2016.
As part of Council’s MV2040 commitment to creating a green and water sensitive city, we teamed up with Melbourne Water to create an entirely new wetland at Rosehill Park as a stormwater harvesting project.
This project is a great example of a wetland system providing sustainable irrigation to green an informal recreational oval area, which is considered just as valuable for the health of the community as a formalised sports oval for organised sports groups.
It also reinforces the importance of reducing urban heat island effects by enhancing the park to be a cool green space for the community.
Dirty water that flows through our streets and into nearby drains is now collected and treated by thousands of new native wetland plants in our ponds, taking up the nutrients and pollutants, resulting in improvements to our creeks and our bay.
The wetland will collect and treat over 95 ML stormwater annually. Once the stormwater is cleaned, some of it gets used to water the grassed oval area before continuing on its journey to Steele Creek and Maribyrnong River, and then onto the bay.
The new wetland will provide the following benefits:
- Improvements to downstream waterway health (by removing nitrogen and pollutants entering Steele Creek and Maribyrnong River as well as reducing downstream flooding and erosion),
- Providing a sustainable irrigation supply to the grassed oval area,
- Increasing local biodiversity and creating a new enriched habitat.
As part of the construction works, we completed extensive earthworks and underground drainage infrastructure. We installed rock work, erosion protection, native wetland and riparian planting, a boardwalk structure, an irrigation pump cabinet and a new irrigation system to the oval area.
In addition, we were able to re-use clay from site to line the base of the ponds, therefore avoiding the need for imported clay material, which is a great environmental outcome for the project.
As a result, this park will now become home to much more native wildlife, as the healthy clean wetland will mean a better home for our native birds, fish and yabbies. The ecological benefits include greater local biodiversity, which will support the ecosystem for native species such as the buff banded rails, herons and native aquatic species.
The new impressive boardwalk bridge structure will create an essential connection from south of the wetland to the play and picnic area, as well as provide a great perspective from over the water.
The new dry creek bed feature will be a great place to explore. The riparian planting around the wetland will also provide essential habitat for local fauna, as well as embankment stabilisation.
This project is a great example of Council’s collaboration with Melbourne Water who contributed $300,000 through the Living Rivers Grants. Thank you to everyone for your contribution, patience and interest.
While the wetland is working to clean our storm water, it’s important to stop paint, chemicals and pollution from getting onto our nearby roads and into the system. Please contact Council if you need advice on how to dispose of waste or if you see pollution or spills on your street.
As part of the wetland project works, we took the opportunity to upgrade the carpark area to a sealed hard-wearing surface with line marking. This will help maximise the parking spaces for visitors coming to see our park.
Rosehill Park Wetland is a natural water body, now home to many native birds and aquatic species.
To help maintain good water quality and protect native wildlife, it is essential to keep our new wetland free of carp and goldfish. Carp and other introduced species including goldfish can quickly undo a lot of the work we’ve done to create this environmentally friendly, native animal sanctuary at Rosehill park. Carp are incredibly invasive as they suck up mud, stir up silt and muddy the water, blocking sunlight to aquatic vegetation and native fish and lowering water quality.
You can find out more about the damage caused by Carp here: www.carp.gov.au
Rosehill Park is also not a home for abandoned pets. Please help us maintain this new enriched ecosystem for our native fauna species such as the buff banded rails, herons and native aquatic species. Help us continue to keep our wetland healthy and free from carp, as well as other pest species:
- Carp fish and goldfish
- Exotic/domesticated ducks
- Pet turtles
Dumping pets at Rosehill Park exposes them to harm, threats and illness. Abandoned pets should be surrendered to the RSPCA or local animal shelters, who will take care of them properly.
Fishing at Rosehill Park is not allowed and is prohibited.
There’s plenty of great spots to throw a line in nearby in Moonee Valley, including the Maribyrnong River. Catching carp may be fun, but they have a devastated impact on our waterways and Rosehill Park is not a place for fishing. It’s why we’re asking for your help by not dumping unwanted pets in the ponds or introducing carp for fishing.
You can visit the Victorian Fisheries Authority to discover places you can fish in Moonee Valley. To report dumping or illegal fishing, please contact Council on tel:9243 8888.
Future works will occur in the coming years. This will include various landscape improvements as part of the masterplan implementation works, including pathways, furniture, play and picnic upgrades to enhance the public amenity, and complement the wetland project.
We would like to thank everyone, including local residents, for their contribution, patience and interest. We will continue to monitor grass and planting establishment as part of the ongoing maintenance of the park.
The wetland in the park is designed to have many benefits including, improving the downstream waterway health by filtering and removing nitrogen and pollutants before they enter Steele Creek and Maribyrnong River and reducing flooding and erosion, providing a sustainable supply of irrigation and providing improved habitat and increasing biodiversity.
What capacity does this wetland have to provide flood mitigation? Will there be any localised flooding issues as a result of the new wetland?
The design for the wetland does include as some capacity to store floodwater when there is a large inflow through the system. During the design, flood modelling was done for the catchment to assess if the diversion of the flow into the system would cause an increase of flooding within downstream residential properties south of Rosehill Park and east of Rachelle Road. This modelling showed there was no increase in the 100 ARI flood flows downstream of Rosehill Park to the area south of the park and west of Rachelle Road. In fact, it showed there will be a slight reduction in flooding along Rachelle Road south of the diversion into the park.
The current water level seems to be well under the capacity of the development and I can see the water supply for irrigation of the park to be insufficient in times of long droughts.
Once stormwater passes through the wetland treatment pond, irrigation water is harvested directly from the second harvesting located to the south-side of the wetland system.
The harvesting pond is intended to irrigate the existing oval in Rosehill Park and is expected to meet 85% of the annual irrigation demand for that area. In times of extended periods of no rainfall, the irrigation will be limited to particular areas and when there isn’t enough recycled stormwater available, the back-up potable water supply will be used for irrigation of those high priority areas of the park.
The rock waterway between the treatment pond and harvesting pond looks like it will not have any water flow due to its height above the natural waterline.
Correct, the dry creek bed will not receive water flow through the channel and it's not strictly a functional aspect to the wetland. However, it was included in the design to provide some interesting variation in treatments across the site. It will also provide valuable alternative habitat opportunities as well as an area for informal play and discovery for children to interact with nature.
More information
Any queries can be sent to the City Design team at ParkImprovements@mvcc.vic.gov.au or give our parks team a call on 9243 8888.
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