Over six times the size of Sydney's Centennial Park or Victoria's Cranbourne gardens, a massive 64 times the size of Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens, it would rival the great urban parks on earth, as extensive as Windsor Great Park, the UK's largest public reserve.

The sad fact is Ballarat did once have just such a reserve - the Ballarat West Town Common.

Established in 1861, a full nine years before the city had been declared, it stretched from present-day Lucas to the Dowling Forest racecourse.

Its size was its fate. Too large for a shire to maintain, the land was easy pickings for vested interests and the well-connected. Denuded of vegetation rather than nurtured, a lack of vision and almost criminally inept management saw public land pass to private hands with audacious ease.

What might have been a World Heritage site became instead a sprawl of tin sheds, tailings and Tiger Moths.

The loss of the West Common raises a serious question. As Ballarat expands, as developers push for more land releases, will the public win more access to park space - or will it lose?

The City of Ballarat's director of development and growth Natalie Robertson says while new parks and reserves are continually being planned and developed in growth areas and areas of the city undergoing significant growth through subdivision, there are 'relatively few' new parks as large as 10 or more hectares.

"Most new recreational parks are typically in the .5 ha to 2ha size range," Ms Robertson says.

This means areas such as Victoria Park (130 hectares), Black Hill Reserve (21ha) or areas like Harry Lavery Reserve and the Botanic Gardens will remain Ballarat's larger public parks, unless communities in developing areas agitate for change.

Dr Judy Bush is Lecturer in Urban Planning at the University of Melbourne.

She says the 1929 metropolitan plan for Melbourne, which established the fabled and now-under-pressure 'Green Wedges', is still an effective planning strategy.

"We do take our eye off the ball in strategically planning for green space," she says.

"It's increasingly important, as urbanisation processes lead to denser urban areas, to ensure that we have public open space. And we know that green space is really important for our health and wellbeing and for biodiversity."

Building the balance between biodiversity and habitat versus equitable access for the public is important, says Dr Bush, but the willingness to have the vision to propose a large new public space is equally necessary.

"Calling for the the creation of larger open spaces is really important," Dr Bush says.

"What sort of cities do we want in future? Future cities need to be liveable; places where we and non-human neighbours can thrive together. There's a really important role for government to do serious strategic planning work to look at the shape of their future cities... and community has a really strong role to play in continuing to argue for that; and making sure that we foreground traditional owner voices in our planning for future cities."

Dr Bush says the new state government Open Space Strategy For Melbourne 2021 should be required reading for all cities.

READ MORE:

But do Ballarat's planners and council have the vision and will to create another large-scale public park anywhere? As massive housing developments sweep westward almost weekly, as new plans are drafted for huge estates on the city's east entrance, at Miners Rest and the 'Northern Growth Investigation Area' and even in BWEZ - will the new residents get even one park on the scale of those already enjoyed by the already settled inhabitants?

Will there be councillors and citizens of the calibre of James Oddie and William Brooks, political opposites who joined their voices in 1903 to oppose the loss of Ballarat Common land to a government scheme for housing on what they called "the lungs and breathing space for the people"?

It seems unlikely, says Dr Kiran Shinde, Convenor of the Planning Program at Latrobe University.

Dr Shinde says the history of creating large parks is not only limited by the paucity of land available in the present, but by modern fashion in park design and philosophy.

"We're looking at more environmentally sustainable parcels of land and making sure that we maintain biodiversity," says Dr Shinde.

"In the early 1910s, 1920s, in what we call the 'parks movement', where we had large tracts of land kept as parklands, that situation will not happen now. That was almost like a nostalgic reaction to industrial development; we wanted to have all of that land. Now there's a different mode altogether: we are wanting to go closer to nature, to keep it as close as possible. Now what we see is, say, land around creeks being reserved for open spaces. So there's more emphasis again on connecting with nature, but not in a very rigid manner."

Dr Shinde says on green field sites, where there is land available to build common amenity space, it will not be built on the scale of the past, but some developers are beginning to understand the value of providing worthwhile public space.

He says use of public land has soared during the pandemic, proving its value and its need, and while areas like the Ballarat Common were established at a different time in a different industrial and economic period, the preservation of those which remain is increasingly important.

There is a remnant of Common in Ballarat, not part of the original West Common but just to the north, off the Ring Road. Could it be saved from the endless sea of development and preserved?

Its future is far from certain. The City of Ballarat is the Commons Committee of Management, "so there are no members other than Council (the Land Manager) in consultation with the Crown (the Land Owner)", says Natalie Robertson.

When questioned last week as to why the Common was included in the Northern Growth Investigation Area for development planning, Ms Robertson said construction on the land was not planned.

"Through the inclusion of this land in a precinct, council is able to advocate to state government for improved investment in this space to improve its function as an active or passive recreation area," Ms Robertson said.

Alarmingly, there is no council policy for the preservation of existing parklands and Commons. Ms Robertson said various Acts of Parliament, the designated title of land and planning scheme provisions all act to protect existing parklands and Commons.

None of these saved the West Commons, fought for and established by local farmers and townspeople, to protect the growth and supply of fresh fruit and vegetables threatened by the expanding land grabs of the region's powerful squatters.

Over a century and a half later, the squatters - or their latter day equivalents - prevailed. The Ballarat West Common, beset on all sides by the inequities of growth and the tyranny of development, is no more.

In 2014 the last of the public estate was handed back to the state government's development corporations, Places Victoria and Major Projects Victoria (now Development Victoria) by the City of Ballarat.

The land was subsumed into the Ballarat West Employment Zone (BWEZ), "the engine room for jobs and economic growth in Ballarat over the next 20 years."

"The project involves the development of surplus Crown Land for industrial, wholesale, logistics, construction, commercial and residential uses, encouraging employment growth in Ballarat and the surrounding region," the corporation's website says.

The classification of 'surplus Crown land' is the last of a thousand cuts which caused the death of the Common but from its birth it was under attack.

The Common was used for stock grazing and cropping, including flax for linen and timber for firewood.

Farmers going to market would spell livestock on the shared pastures, improving the quality of their meat. The Common provided employment for herdsmen and labourers who weeded thistle. It was reported in 1864 of the 200 cattle on the land, 120 were operated by 'poor people who lived entirely' off of their livestock, including 'widows' and people with disabilities.

In 1903, the city's fathers, as they were want to be called in that time, met to debate fiercely the excision of a substantial parcel of land from the Ballarat Common.

"That this meeting of and other citizens here assembled enter its protest against the lopping of 200 acres (mors or less) o£ the Ballarat Common by the Hon. the Minister of Lands, for small block settlement, or for any other purpose, its retention in its present form being paramount to the best interests of the 50,000 inhabitants of the three adjoining municipal corporations," The Ballarat Star reported.

It could have been worse.

A 1997 proposal by Ballarat real estate agent Stewart Gull involved the development of an aerospace industry based on patents owned by him for a radical new airship design.

The plan gained support from the City of Ballarat, and Mr Gull was offered a 50-year lease, with an option to buy the Ballarat aerodrome within the first three years. To facilitate this proposal the city sought to buy the area from the state government to effect a change in the permanent reserved status in order to on sell to Mr. Gull's company, Begul Aviation.

That was rejected, to be followed by the Golfpac consortium scheme, involving the construction of resorts, two golf courses - and the extinguishing of native title. This fell over too.

Mining companies, Victorian governments, the councils meant to be protecting it; speculators ('land-jobbers') pushing for cheap land; schools and sports groups to aviators and industry - everyone wanted a slice.

In less than two years from 1861 its area was halved. The shire councils raided it for topsoil (sports ovals) and boulders (crushed for road gravel). Ballarat High School was established on it, the Lunatic Asylum and later the Ballarat Golf Course. The Wheat Board got silos and a railway siding, the Commonwealth an entire aerodrome. The Irvine state government built cottages for the poor on it.

While neighbouring Wendouree and Wendouree West were also constructed initially with Housing Commission homes, it appears there is no plan for new social housing on the BWEZ site.

This article drew in parts on Metamorphoses at the Ballarat West Town Common: Were Changes for the Common Good?, a thesis by June Driscoll published in 2004, provided by Cameron Coventry.

If you are seeing this message you are a loyal digital subscriber to The Courier, as we made this story available only to subscribers. Thank you very much for your support and allowing us to continue telling Ballarat's story. We appreciate your support of journalism in our great city.