Walking along the path atop Rocky Bay’s cliffs, full-on residential suburbia is generally only a few steps away.
If you look over and down to the other (south/ southeastern) side of the Swan, residential suburbia, yachting facilities, and assorted urban infrastructure oft encroach to within a few steps of water’s edge.
Miraculously, however, on the top/ edge of the steep, cliffy (North Fremantle/ Mosman Park) side – and immediately below, on/near that shoreline – Rocky Bay is altogether wilder and lovelier than is usually true of a riverine environment within a “premium residential real estate” area of a capital city
In some places it is pleasingly hard to believe that the Indian Ocean is much less than a kilometre away, that major highway, railway and port are closer still, and that both the nearest houses and the river cliff’s edge are just metres distant, on either side of the walking track.
As you can see, the estuarine waters below are very much alive; if you were to dive in, near these rocks, you might be lucky enough to see some of Rocky Bay’s dragons – leafy sea dragons.
Messing about in boats is a popular activity, rarely hurried.
In Perth – and doubtless, most other cities too – billions of dollars of unearned income has been “stolen”, via developers’ false promises.
Perth’s skyline is littered – and “littered” is an appropriate word – with examples.
Some corporate towers reach so high because “plot bonus ratios” were given to their proponents, in exchange for the “public amenity”, “heritage restoration”, or “offsets” that they would provide.
Approvals granted, the historic hotel was not “saved”, the promised theatre was never built, the “public park”/“open space” was reduced in size or proved very much less splendid/welcoming than the version put forward….and so on, ad nauseam…
Major retail and residential developments often show an equally yawning gap between the “public-spirted” vision-splendid, presented to gain approval, and what then eventuates – a third-rate eyesore, delivered by smarmy profiteers.
I am happy (and surprised) that the doubtless highly lucrative “development” on the Mosman Park side of Rocky Bay has proved a happy exception to this pattern.
Even fair-minded opponents of any residential development there would surely recognise that a lot of public amenity has been added, that a lot of intelligent and appropriate revegetation has been undertaken, and the relevant clifftops are now in a much healthier, quasi-“natural” state than they were over the several preceding decades.
Streptopelia senegalensis, the Laughing Dove is abundant in southwestern WA, but absent from the rest of Australia.
It is, however, not yet another WA endemic; Laughing Doves are an accidentally introduced species, brought from Africa to Perth Zoo in the 1860s.