But postcards only show you the side the photographer wants you to see. If you tilt the lens just a fraction toward the water’s edge, the illusion shatters.
Albert Park Lake should be one of Melbourne’s greatest urban environmental assets. For the local community, it is an essential way of life. It’s where rowers cut through the morning mist, families gather for weekend barbecues, children learn the physics of sailing, and local clubs train generations of athletes. With high-density living rapidly climbing along Queens Road, Albert Park is functionally becoming Melbourne’s premier Central Park.
We desperately need to start treating it like one.
When New York built Central Park, it did so with a fierce, democratic protectiveness. Its creators envisioned a permanent, sacred oasis designed to offer respite from concrete and chaos. New York guards that green space jealously. London does the same with Hyde Park. These great cities understand that a great park is a permanent civic legacy.
Nowhere is this neglect more obvious than in the water itself. While the State Labor Government spends millions updating the paddock and pit buildings, the lake is silently suffocating from severe neglect.
The most alarming symptom of this neglect is the recurring outbreak of avian botulism. In recent years, hundreds of native waterbirds—including black swans, pelicans, ducks, and ibises—have been found dead or paralysed along the shoreline. The recipe for botulism is well understood: warm temperatures, shallow, stagnant waterways, and a build-up of decaying organic material and silt. It is a crisis born entirely of ecological stagnation.
Local Member for Prahran, Rachel Westaway MP, has been entirely right to keep a spotlight on this unfolding environmental tragedy.
Even the park’s physical infrastructure is showing its age. Retaining walls and lake-edge assets are crumbling, left unmaintained until they inevitably become more dangerous and significantly more expensive to fix.
A great city is judged by how it treats its public spaces when the cameras are turned off.
No one is arguing that Melbourne shouldn’t pride itself on its status as a major events capital.
History tells us that when global events roll into town, they can provide enduring gifts.
When Paris staged the 1889 Exposition Universelle, it permanently redefined its skyline with the Eiffel Tower.
When Rome hosted the 1960 Summer Olympics, it poured infrastructure funding into restoring the ancient, long-neglected Appian Way and its surrounding parklands as a gift to future generations. Even the ancient Romans understood that hosting a massive public spectacle demanded an equally massive investment in permanent civic architecture.
We need a serious, well-funded commitment to the restoration of Albert Park. This means a proactive wildlife response team, regular water aeration, proper attention to accumulated silt, and transparent reporting on water quality.
The community groups who love this park are doing everything they can to care for it, but they are being thwarted in their efforts by a State Labor Government with little to no regard for the legacy and environmental health of this beautiful habitat and park.
Only by realising this glorious habitat and public open space can Melbourne truly claim Albert Park as a world-class civic legacy, ensuring its entire green expanses live up to the treasured postcard.
Supplied by Nick McGowan, Shadow Minister for the Environment.
Image: Nick McGowan with local MP Rachel Westaway, MLA Prahran.
