Wednesday Walkies: Downfall Creek Reserve
Bilsen Road
WAVELL HEIGHTS
This park is amazing and I'm so jealous of the people who have this place as their local dog park.
I've listed the address for this park as Bilsen Road, Wavell Heights, but there's also easy access from Brickyard Road, Virginia; the latter is the place where we parked on our visit, and it's just a short walk over a little bridge followed by an immediate left turn to get to the park, however there is 1/4 hour parking on this street during school pick up and drop off times, so do be mindful of that. Bilsen Road is an equally as convenient spot to park, right at the end of the street you can literally get out of the car and you're in the park. There's some street parking, as well as a little car park just before you reach the end of the road.
This is a large park, and also unfenced. Although Bilsen Road is a quiet road- an industrial area on a dead end street so not a huge amount of traffic at all- just over the other side of the creek is more parkland, followed by suburbia and busy roads, so well behaved dogs with good recall is definitely still an absolute must.
The off leash area is clearly marked, both the beginning and end of it, and there are poo bags, bins and water in the park as well. There are also some pergolas for shaded seating areas for the humans as well.
Like I mentioned before, this park is big, and there's plenty of space and segregation in areas so that if you want to keep to yourself, you absolutely can. The absolutely best feature of this park is the direct creek access, at multiple points along the park length, and while the steep bank isn't the easiest thing for humans to navigate, the dogs have no issues. I have some water mad dogs, so the fact that they could run and stretch their legs as well as have regular dips in the shallow water was very exciting for them!
We had an accidental detour prior to reaching this park, so we got there about mid morning and stayed for an hour, wandering up and down the length of the park a few times to give the dogs an opportunity for a good run and paddle. There was a dog walker there with a huge group of dogs small, large and everything in between, but they were all lovely, well socialised and well controlled, and my dogs that I had with me enjoyed making some new friends- not something I usually encourage them or allow them to do at off leash dog parks. We did also have a run in with a very rude dog who wasn't part of this dog walking crew, but the owner was at least attempting to regain control over his dog, and used common sense quite quickly and leashed the dog and left.
The only negative I have about this park is its distance from me. That's it. It was well worth the drive, and if it was just even a little bit closer would be somewhere that we'd go to quite regularly. If you're local- or even not- and haven't checked this place out, definitely give it a visit.
