What is the Grevillea Park || When is it open || Contact Details|| Who finances the park || Are there plants for sale || Where is it located || How did it start || Who helps the Park || How did the Chapel get there || Can I help || What facilities does the Park have || Is there a list of plantings || What types of plants are on display || Is there a video greeting from Ray Brown || Are the grevilleas indigenous || Are there higher quality images available || Website details || What is Bulli Beauty
New RTA plan for a road through the park
The RTA has plans that will see a large section of the front of the park, where most work has occurred, by resumed for a new road. Read more details.
Depends on your perspective... The park aims to encourage the appreciation and study of native plants by being
Parts of the Park are open all year. As well as the enclosed section (open 12 days a year) there are two unenclosed sections.
The enclosed section is open 12 days a year. These days are arranged in 3 sets of double weekends. Admission charges are $5 per adult, children accompanied by adults free (see "who finances the park?").
Open days for 2008 (opening times are 10am until 4pm) are:
The last open days for 2007 were October 6th, 7th.
The rear rainforest section is accessible 365 days a year. It
is a popular area for walkers and access is either from Seymour St (off
Cope Place), Bulli or walking around the northern boundary fence. This
area is for walkers only and other forms of activity are forbidden (
considerable damage has been done in the past by trail-bikes,
push-bikes, horse riding and campers).
The front area is RTA (the NSW Government Roads and Traffic
Authority) land. The Grevillea Park maintains this area at no charge to
the RTA, and considerable expense to the Park. It provides open land as
well as many plantings which have made this area the equivalent of
other maintained general park land throughout the Illawarra.
Email info@grevilleapark.org
Money to maintain the park comes from admission charges on Open Days (a charge of $5 per adult, children accompanied by adults free), plant sales and refreshment and merchandise sales on Open Days. Other income comes from donations (which are tax deductible) and membership fees (currently $6). Many patrons kindly leave a donation after visiting the park and organisations such as the Australian Plants Society have provided large sums (eg $5,000 towards the cost of self composting toilets within the park).
On the enclosed section open days a range of Australian native plants are avaialble for purchase, including some rare Grevillea cultivars. Plant sales provide a large proportion of the funds needed to maintain the park ( see "who finances the park".)
Entrance is from the Princes Highway, Bulli. The park is situated
behind the Bulli Showground.
The Park is a short walk from Bulli station. Alight at Bulli, then
follow the highway north past the Bowling Club, then turn left
(signposted as Grevillea Park Road).
During the mid 1980s the need for a permanent park to "house" wild sourced Grevillea plant material became necessary.
The Grevillea Study Group of the Society for Growing Australian Plants had grown these "wild" grevilleas under nursery conditions at Bulli up to that time and it was soon realised a large park would be needed for the collection.
With support from the Sydney and Canberra Botanic Gardens, Wollongong Council was approached with regard to the establishment of the park. With support from Mr Gregory of WCC and various Councillors the area was selected. Work began in 1987. In 1993, after a group funded by the LEAP scheme (for the unemployed) worked for a considerable period of the year, the park opened in September 1993.
Organisations who supply plants on consignment for open days: East
Coast Nursery, Sydney Wildflower Nursery, Ausflora Plants (Philip
Keene)
Organisations that provide financial or material support: Australian Plants Society,
Grevillea
Study Group. Royal Botanic Gradens, Mt Annan
Organisations that help with publicity for the enclosed section Open
Days: gareden shows on ABC radio, 2UE, "Compost Heap", Graham and
Sandra Ross, Angus Stewart, Northern Leader community newspaper. For example, the April/May opening in 2006 was heavily patronised, due undoubtedly to good publicity from Angus Stewart and the programme for the park on Gardening Australia.
Volunteers who help staff the park on open days, in particular members of the Illawarra branch of Australian Plants Society and Corrimal Garden club.
And of course the small but dedicated band of volunteers who put in countless hours of unpaid effort in maintaining and developing the park. It is easy to underestimate this task.
The Chapel was originally situated at Sherbrooke, a small village situated on the escarpment to the west. With the construction of the Cataract dam the village had to be moved. The Chapel was moved to Woonona as a residence. Later it was earmarked for demoliton. Ray Brown (who is also heavily involved in Heritage issues) organised for it to be moved to the Park, where it sits to this day.
Please do! There are regular working bees on Mondays and a variety
of activities involved that cater for all ages, shapes, sizes and
interests. If you cannot make the Mondays there is some work done on
weekends -- contact us for more details!
You can become a member. And lastly you can visit the park on open days
-- and bring your friends!
The park has picnic and toilet facilities. The area around the
Chapel has bench seating, a barbecue and is close to the
toilets.
Light refreshments (tea, coffee, cordial, biscuits) are on sale at the
Chapel. As well literature on native plants and cards are also for
sale.
There are a number of other areas around the park where you could enjoy
a picnic -- the grassed area at the front or in the rear rainforest
section are also suitable.
There are many paths inside the enclosed section where you can wander
around at your leisure. There is no preferred route, maps are provided
on open days. Paths within the park are wheelchair and pram friendly!
How long it takes depends on how much you want to see. The tracks are
designed to enhance inspection of the specimens and appreciation of
vistas.
Those venturing on the rainforest walk at the back are advised to wear
appropriate footwear. Unfortunately the nature of the terrain means
some sections of the loop track are not pram nor wheelchair friendly.
The loop track can be navigated in approximately 45 minutes normal
walking speed.
Plant sales are also available on open days. The range generally
includes a number of grafted specimens, both grevilleas and other
native species.
Moves are also underway to increase the amount of labelling on specimens within the enclosed section (vandalism prevents labelling in other sections).
What types of plants are on display
All plants are Australian natives. As well as specimens from the Grevillea genus, there are many other spectacular natives from variety of genera. The rear rainforest contains species mostly indigenous to Illawarra.
Is there a video greeting from Ray Brown
A 1.6MB download. Presently only in Microsoft windows media (.wmv) format, stay tuned for a smaller mpeg version!
The term Indigenous plants refer to those that had viable
colonies in a particular area before European settlement. As such there
are no indigenous species of Grevilleas in the coastal strip of North
Wollongong. Grevillea
capitellata (in some works referred to as G. diffusa) grows on
the top of the escarpment.
A large number of plantings within the park, especially those from
Western Australia, are grafted (eg G. robusta or G.
"Royal Mantle" rootstock). This ensures they will survive the heavy
soils, high rainfall and high humidity characteristic of Bulli.
Are there higher quality images available
Nearly all images are compressed to maximise download speed. However
this can sacrifice quality. Higher quality images, ie the actual image
before it underwent compression, are sometimes available. To see if it does exist, you
will have to construct the URL to access it as follows:
if there is an image that is associated with a URL that ends in the
form doneIMG_xxxx.JPG or IMG_xxxxdone.JPG (where xxxx is a 4 digit number),
construct a new URL as http://www.grevilleapark.org/highqual/IMG_xxxx.JPG.
The .JPG should be the same case as the lower quality image.
For example: http://www.grevilleapark.org/static_images/42/doneIMG_3107.JPG
would translate to http://www.grevilleapark.org/highqual/IMG_3107.JPG
Unfortunately not all high quality ones have been preserved, so you may
find you get a 404 (Not Found) response. If so we do not have the high
quality version, sorry.
Grevillea "Bulli Beauty" is a cultivar that arose from a seedling within the park. It was officially launched at the July 2005 opening. Read more details.
Website devised and implemented by Mark Ziebell. Plant details are stored in a MySQL database and accessed via Java 2 Enterprise Edition Web Application. All images served as static content from the web server. Nearly all photographs taken on a Canon Ixus II camera, usage donated by Amy Ziebell (hopefully new images will be added to supplement existing or replace existing with higher quality versions -- at the moment priority has been given to download speed, sometimes sacrificing quality). Images are processed in batch mode by Advanced JPEG Compressor. Diagrams of beds produced using CeledyDraw.
