The Ballarat Town Commons encompasses 680 hectares, lying alongside the Western Freeway at the rear of Macarthur Park estate near Miners Rest. It's the last remnant of a larger pair of commons, Ballarat Town and the enormous Ballarat West, which enclosed over 2500 hectares and also served to protect wetlands fed by the Burrumbeet Creek.

Over time the commons, which are Crown lands and owned by the Victorian government, were whittled down to the current surviving parcel. Ballarat West Common was lost to developments including the Ballarat Aerodrome, industrial land and recently the Ballarat West Employment Zone.

The fear of losing Ballarat Town Commons spurred an impassioned open letter from a group of concerned historians, social scientists and scientists in 2021. Written by historian Cameron Coventry, it proposed the land if managed judiciously. could be Ballarat's equivalent to New York's Central or London's Richmond parks.

"The people's land more than ever should be used for collective gain," Mr Coventry wrote in the letter.

"Ballarat Town Common(s) must be kept as an open space."

In an interview with The Courier, Ms Robertson reiterated the Town Commons, while part of the rezoning, was safe from destruction.

"There is absolutely no intention to develop the Ballarat Commons for housing," Ms Robertson said.

'It's been incorporated into the growth area; it's recognised as open space and recreation space. When we incorporate it into a growth area, it gives us opportunities to advocate for funding to improve it."

As Crown land, Ms Robertson says, the incorporation of the Commons into the northern growth zone gives council the chance to add the public land into precinct structure plan (PSP) reports. The city can then advocate for future state government funding, allowing council investment in 'active and passive recreation' spaces.

Ballarat has few inner city parks of any great size, with only Woowookarung Regional Park in Mt Clear matching the Commons for size. Victoria Park is a mere 130ha by comparison.

The City of Ballarat is the Commons committee of management, meaning there is no public oversight of the land other than council (as Land Manager) in consultation with the Crown (the state government as Land Owner).

Common land dates back to medieval times, where the public were entitled to access land for farming, harvesting or grazing for their own sustenance, relatively free of interference from local lords and landowners, and in 'peaceful enjoyment'.

The Ballarat Commons were established in 1861 to protect the city's food supply from the encroachment of squatters, whose rapacious greed for cheap land threatened to starve the rest of Ballarat's inhabitants.

The squatters saw no evil in resuming great tracts of greenfield for their own profit, to the exclusion of the rest of the population. The squatters were largely supported in their actions by the state government's newly constituted Legislative Council, which regarded itself as the protector of vested rural property interests against 'radical democracy'.

The protection of the entire 680ha as parkland now depends on the will of future state governments to resist the modern encroachment of property developers, whose own desire for greenfield land continues unabated.

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