Activities
The Friends of Royal Park, Parkville holds regular meetings, bird surveys and working bees. We also take an interest in matters affecting Royal Park, such as revegetation projects, bioblitz’s, planning and building developments, transport and parking issues, park and open space projects, history, making submissions and participating in Council and other government programs. We are a member of Landcare Victoria Inc and the Royal Park Stakeholders Network.
The Friends of Royal Park, Parkville is also involved in planning, transport and other matters concerning Royal Park.
The Friends of Royal Park is a member of Landcare Victoria Inc and undertakes its activities in accordance with their Child Safety Policy.
Meetings
General meetings are held every second month, 7:30pm in the Walmsley House, 161 Gatehouse Street, Royal Park, Parkville, or occasionally by Zoom.
The AGM is held in October. Occasionally, special meetings are held with guest presentations on particular topics of interest. Members of the public are welcome to attend. Reports of these presentations can be found under Special Presentations and Reports.
2024 Dates:
Feb 6th, April 2nd, June 4th, Aug 6th, Oct 1st and Dec 3rd.
Bird Surveys
Bird surveys in the Park have been held since 2007.
Surveys are held bimonthly on Sundays, 9-11am, meeting the Trin Warren Tam-boore Wetlands carpark, Oak Street, Parkville West.
Dates are provided on the website and Facebook page. Members of the public are welcome to attend.
Survey data is recorded into Birdlife Australia’s Birdata Online Application and the recorded data is also transferred to the Atlas of Living Australia for research purposes.
Working Bees
These are currently scheduled for the 2nd Wednesday and 4th Wednesday of every month, 10am – 12noon.
Tasks can comprise of various activities around the Park, including plantings, weeding, seed collection, propagation of indigenous seedlings in the nursery, working with Council and other organisations’ programs and activities.
Members are notified by email, confirming date, task and meeting point. To participate, email friends@royalpark.org.au
Royal Park – Citizen Scientists
Royal Park is also a popular location for hundreds citizen scientists throughout the year. They record Observations into online platforms such as eBird, Birdata, iNaturalist and numerous other platforms. All this data finds it’s way into the Atlas of Living Australia and is available for scientific research. Since 2017 over 150,000 observations and photographs of all wildlife and flora have recorded in the Atlas of Living Australia for the Park.
Facebook, Instagram & YouTube
The Friends of Royal Park, Parkville have a Facebook Group, Instagram & Youtube channel. Featuring, photos of birds, insects, plants, landscapes, events and past presentations of interest and comments.
For more information on our ACTIVITIES, email friends@royalpark.org.au
Join the Friends for a Moonlight Meander through Royal Park to catch the prettiest view of the city skyline, see an elusive Bogong moth or two and appreciate the magic of the dark park at night.
Royal Park is the City of Melbourne’s last designated dark park, keeping outdoor lighting to a minimum in order to protect and maintain a healthy wildlife population.
Bring a torch if you wish (not necessary). Please wear sensible footwear.
iNaturalist* Can be used to:
- Browse the observations made in Royal Park or anywhere around the globe… maybe future holiday spots.
- Log your own observations by uploading either a photo or a sound recording and help map biodiversity for everyone to use. Note only wild organisms will be accepted; not domesticated.
- Search on the name of your favourite bird/insect/plant and see if/where people have spotted it around your area.
- The best feature is the iNaturalist artificial intelligence. It can analyse your photo and suggest the most likely couple of names for what you have seen based on previous data. It then gives you more examples of photos to compare. Once you upload your photo and make a likely identification using the artificial intelligence, you can then either log out or submit that observation. If you submit, other people will either agree with your choice or give you another classification to check. When your choice is agreed upon, the observation becomes “research grade” and is uploaded into the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA).
- Visit the Royal Park, Park iNaturilist Project https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/projects/royal-park-parkville
* iNaturalist Australia is a membership agreement between the iNaturalist Network, the Atlas of Living Australia and CSIRO. It is a neat tool that can be used to record observations of the occurrence and abundance of living organisms for present and future biological and ecological research.
