Kings Park

A woman that I was sitting next to in orientation mentioned one morning that I should go up to Kings Park. This park was just to the west of the central business district and I had looked at it before on google maps while checking out the rest of the city area. I was looking for place to jog after work, so I picked a few streets out that made up a fairly direct route and decided that I’d follow them as soon as I could change into shorts and sneakers.

The jog over started easily enough; I got to cross an elevated pedestrian bridge over one of the major highways through the city. The bridge stood out to me for both the nice view it had of downtown, and also the lack of high railing, fencing, or other stout barrier to keep people on the bridge. The jog started to get interesting after I crossed the pedestrian bridge and caught the first glimpse of the hill in front of me. Mount St, the name of the road, should have tipped me off. It wasn’t particularly long, but it was pretty steep and I was able to slowly climb to the top.









I followed along the path after huffing up the hill and I ran smack into the reason why this park is so popular; the elevated views it offers of downtown Perth are really stunning. There were several lookout spots which allowed for unobstructed views of the traffic, people, buildings, and Swan River. I didn’t have my camera that day, but I came back the next to capture the scene.

















Kings Park is the largest inner city park in the world, besting Central Park by over half a square kilometer. There are several war memorials in the park to pay tribute to Australian solders lost in WWI and II. There are also nature trails and botanical gardens on the far side of the park that I didn’t have time to explore before the sun started setting.



On the way back to the hotel, before my controlled descent back down Mount St, I noticed a number of people congregating at the end of a short dead-end, Cliff St. I jogged over to investigate and found that the street led to set of stairs called Jacobs Ladder. People were using the 242 step stairway down to Mounts Bay Road as exercise climbing up and down!