Outer Circle Linear Park - Peel Street to Princess Street Dog Off Leash Area (Kew)
.jpg "Outer Circle Linear Park - Peel Street to Princess Street Dog Off Leash Area (Kew)")
This is a 25m wide grassy section which is 200m long which runs beside Earl Street. There is a multi-use path running through the area and the northern side has an area with a lot of trees with a wood chip base. Earl Street on the southern side is busy and there are no fences beside the road. There is no water tap or bins but there are some seats beside the path. A dog needs to be well controlled to be off leash in this area due to the small area and busy road. A short on leash walk up Princess Street to the north leads to the Kate Campbell Reserve off leash area.
There is an information board on the Yarra River viaduct. The text reads:
The Yarra River brick and steel viaduct was built for double tracks (though only one was ever laid) and has three brick and two stone piers between its abutments. These support four 110-foot (34-metre) steel spans, three over the land and one over the Yarra. The brickwork has bluestone footings and there are stone cappings to the piers. Work on this bridge over the Yarra at Alphington commenced in February 1889, but was not completed and tested until November 1890, later in the same year that the Oakleigh to Camberwell sections were opened. Delays on this bridge were a contributing factor to the later opening of the northern portion of the Outer Circle line in March 1891.
John (later Sir John) Monash, the engineer in charge of the Outer Circle line construction, had a narrow escape during the building of the Yarra viaduct. He was supervising the lifting of heavy stones on the bridge works when a rope snapped and a huge stone dropped close to this head. He recorded the incident in his diary saying: " I seemed to live over all my life in a flash...By good luck I was paralysed with a moment's hesitation; had I moved a step it would have been all over with me". A mason had his hand crushed in the accident.
The section of the Outer Circle line from Riversdale to Fairfield Park was officially closed on 12 April 1893. To obtain filling for the Collingwood to Jolimont line in 1900, it was reopened temporarily and became the site of the only fatal accident on the line when a train of 16 trucks carrying 52 labourers was derailed and three men were killed. The line was reopened in 1919 from Fairfield Park for goods traffic to the Australian Paper Mill and this portion closed in approximately 1996, though the line can still be seen cutting across Heidelberg Road. To allow for the building of the Chandler Highway, the line from the bridge to Princess Street, Kew was dismantled in 1930 and the bridge has been used for vehicular traffic since.
This area can be combined to form a continuous walk, with some short on leash sections to cross roads. These sections run from Argyle Road to Princess Street (a total of 2.8 km).
Photos:
Location
100 Earl Street, Kew 3101 Map
