Jubilee Park

Jubilee Park

Thanks to a mostly empty calendar, I had several weeks at my disposal, in a fictitious kind of way. The only thing I really had to do was stay close to home in Dunedin, so as long as I didn’t go on any long overnight expeditions the time was my own. I could do anything I liked, within reason.

I decided, quite randomly, to start with a walk through Jubilee Park in the city’s town belt. This was something I had been meaning to do for a while. I’d also been wondering for some time if Queen Victoria knew she had a park named after her in Dunedin? Further to this, I wondered if there’s an official royal list that identifies every world park, estate, playground, garden and forest that is named after a royal? I’m sure that if Queen Victoria knew that Jubilee Park was named after her, she would have been quite delighted. Anyway, Dunedin’s Jubilee Park was once known as Tomlinson’s Paddock before it was renamed Jubilee Park after Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887. It was here that I spent a lovely morning happily wandering the various paths that twisted and turned through the bush that makes up a section of the city’s town belt.

The route I took made its way from the car park, through a dense line of trees that circumferenced a football ground. The bank on one side was high and steep with a heavy line of trees that sloped up to the sports field, while the other side quickly slipped down to a nearby road. As the path led further into the bush, the canopy of trees widened and grew thick. Occasionally it would split, leaving me with a choice of going left or right. Sometimes the light would drop, hidden by the thick foliage. Other times the sunlight would stream through the trees and bounce off the autumn vegetation.

The path drew to a junction where three of four different paths met and the fallen leaves had overtaken the forest floor. Surveying my options, I could either head down the hill toward a path I hadn’t yet explored, or follow the path I was on to the top of the hill, back to the sports ground and eventually my car. I stood and looked at my surroundings, from time to time leaves would fall and land both on me and near me. At this moment, I realised I wasn’t quite ready to be back at my car just yet, so I headed down hill. The next hour or so was spent in this manner. Walking paths I hadn’t walked in a very long time, criss-crossing my way around Jubilee Park and the nearby town belt in the glistening afternoon sun.