PROJECT Booyeembara Park
LOCATION Fremantle, WA
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT Ecoscape, Fremantle

The vision for Booyeembara Park was to create a unique public open space that provides leisure and recreational opportunities for the whole community and is visionary in terms of innovate design, appropriate technology and sustainability.
The site was quarried for limestone by the early settlers of Fremantle to construct the buildings and later the roads. After quarrying this site until the 1960’s, it became the land fill site for the surrounding city’s non-organic wastes. It was then left a wasteland of rubble and weeds. At the same time it became a treasured public open space for dogs to roam and children to be wild.
In 1997, the Fremantle Council formed a committee to steer the development of a concept plan for a public open space on the site. A number of people from the community were selected based on their interest in the Park, their relationship with the surrounding community and a strong willingness to contribute new ideas to the community design process. The community, for which this landfill had become a precious open space, stated that they wanted the site restored. They wanted it returned to bush land, parkland and recreational open space.