Fun in the Park

It's summer in the city and many programs are run across the park, day one as we strolled out we came upon a playground where hippos sank into the ground and a sand storyteller was on later that day.
There are so many aspects to the park and people, so much going on. The foresight to create this open space for the people of New York is fantastic.

Central Park NYC

Frederick Law Olmsted, the granddaddy of American landscape architecture in the USA, and the designer of Central Park had little idea how prescient he was when he told the City of New York in 1872 that the midtown Manhattan park he was busy creating would serve as the "lungs of the city." Today, the urban forests found within city parks across the country serve not only as recreational and social centers, but also as organic sponges for various forms of pollution and as storehouses of carbon dioxide to help offset global warming.

London, Paris, Rome, Daylesford and New York

When considering Arts and Culture in the Hepburn Shire it may seem ambitious to compare ourselves with all these other great cities but why not . A tour of "The Big Apple" may give us something to aspire to.




Several private benefactors have made this trip possible and our first stop was to an apartment on 110 West, just to the north of Central Park, kindly sponsored by Marina Braun.

The Big Apple
Story has it that the term The Big Apple came from the black stable boys who followed the horses to the small quarter-mile tracks in New Orleans and all over the East and the Middle West.


They were so glad to come to New York where there was big money and a huge city full of opportunity that they called it the ‘Big Apple.’” Buy the 1930’s and 40’s the phrase had become firmly linked to the city’s Jazz scene.
The term had grown stale and was in fact generally forgotten by the 1970s, until Charles Gillett, head of the New York Convention & Visitors Bureau, got the idea of reviving it to draw in desperately needed tourists. It had become better-known for its blackouts, strikes, street crime and occasional riots. What could be a more wholesome symbol of renewal than a plump red apple?


Located on a large natural harbor on the Atlantic coast of the Northeastern United States, The region was inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans at the time of its European discovery in 1524.
European settlement began with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement, later called "Nieuw Amsterdam" (New Amsterdam), on the southern tip of Manhattan in 1614. Dutch colonial Director-General Peter Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan from the Lenape in 1626 for a value of 60 guilders (about $1000 in 2006); a disproved legend says that Manhattan was purchased for $24 worth of glass beads
The settlement was called New Amsterdam until 1664 when the colony came under English control whenthe city was surrendered to the English and renamed "New York" after the English Duke of York and Albany.

To know New York City is to travel the Subway


New York is the most populous city in the United States. A leading global city, that exerts a powerful influence over global commerce, finance, media, culture, art, fashion, research, education, and entertainment. As host of the United Nations Headquarters, it is also an important center for international affairs. So with all that going for it, a great place for the team from the Hepburn Shire to find out about Heritage, Arts, Culture and the Environment.