After the barren concrete of yesterday's shot, it was time for a return to nature... of sorts at least.

The Cook's River is less of a river and more of an industrial canal. Lined by concrete sides for a substantial part of its length, it was once little more than an outlet for industrial waste. However efforts have been made to rehabilitate it over the last couple of decades. There has always been a buffer zone of grassland on either side of it for most of its length. That grassland has also served as a passageway for high voltage transmission towers and lines above, and high pressure gas and fuel pipes below. However in conjunction with the rehabilitation of the river itself some of those buffer zones are being enhanced by tree plantings, landscaping and the installation of facilities. (And no I wasn't tilted at an angle; the trees are leaning slightly to the north.)

I've driven past this park quite a few times and thought that it might be a useful "playground" for some experimentation with morning and evening light, though this wasn't the best day for it; it's been cloudy for the greater part of the day and although the sky has largely cleared to the east, it was still often drifting in front of the sun to the west. Occasionally the sun would break through and provide light like this, but it was still pretty precarious.

There's a cricket oval adjoining the park; the game was still in full swing when I wandered down to the canal hoping to get some decent shots of the willows there (I didn't), and I was thinking of getting some action shots as well... but by the time I came back up 15 minutes later not only had the game ended but everyone had vanished, and I mean Bermuda Triangle style vanished. People, cars, the lot.

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Edit, January 2024. These photos are really starting to move into vintage territory, being 14 years old. As I'm reprocessing them to expunge PBase references, I'm starting to wonder about some aspects of history that I lacked the time or inclination to wonder about when I first took them. In this case, who or what or where is this "Flockhart" to which the park name refers?

For once, it's not a complete mystery where the source of a location's name has been long forgotten. According to the publication A history of Campsie and Croydon Park NSW by Brian J Madden and Lesley Muir, there was an alderman (what are now called "councillors") of that name who had been mayor of both Burwood Council and the smaller Enfield Council, part of which was absorbed into Burwood some time previously. He died in 1957 and the park was named after him in 1958. Unfortunately I've yet to find any other information about him, including his first name.