At Royal Park

Good to know, but Zara wasn't with me.
Much of Royal Park's 180 hectares just north of the city center look like this, a broad sweep of landscape largely native. And wonderful to roam or fly kites in. 
On one side is the elegant university precinct of Parkville, almost entirely intact.
And in the corner abutting Flemington Road the new Royal Children's Hospital has bitten off a wedge.
It was sad to see so many giants felled, but for the children obliged to be hospitalized here, the outlook couldn't be better.
 Such a vast space it is. I used to come through here often, about 25 years ago, when it was much more left to its own devices.
There's a great deal of native bird-life and many superb plants such as this Eucalypt.
And this native Hibiscus.
First set aside by Governor Charles La Trobe in 1845, there are ancient trees here such as this Peppercorn.
I don't know who gets to live in the Gatehouse above, but it'd be a nice kind of corner of the world.
This is the sort of tree I love most, an old, gnarled Eucalypt, seeming to thrust its branches into the sky.
Some of them have been here since before white settlement and before tram tracks were invented.
I'm still trying to work out what this specimen is, with its sausage-like seed pods, one of which I have with me.
However tough our natives are, many exhibit an almost effervescent delicacy.
So stroll-able it is, without the hordes you sometimes find in botanic gardens.
I can't pretend that I find the new architecture complementary to its surroundings, but the view is to live for...