Alison Hartman Garden, often referred to as Mokare Park, is a park on York Street in Albany in the Great Southern region of Western Australia.
York Street is the main street in the centre of Albany, Western Australia. It runs south from a junction with Albany Highway, Lockyer Avenue and Middleton Road downhill towards Princess Royal Drive and the Anzac Peace Park at the foot of the hill adjacent to Princess Royal Harbour.
Albany is a port city in the Great Southern region of Western Australia, 418 km SE of Perth, the state capital. Albany is the oldest colonial settlement in Western Australia, predating Perth and Fremantle by over two years.
The Great Southern Region is one of the nine regions of Western Australia, as defined by the Regional Development Commissions Act 1993, for the purposes of economic development. It is a section of the larger South Coast of Western Australia and neighbouring agricultural regions.
The park, located near the centre of Albany, [1] contains numerous sculptures including the statue of Mokare. [2]
Mokare was a Noongar man, an Aboriginal man from the south-west corner of Australia who was pivotal in aiding European exploration of the area. Mokare had two known brothers: Mollian, who may have been known as Yallapoli, and Nakina, who with Mokare, was a frequent visitor to the Albany settlement, staying with the government resident, Dr Alexander Collie. He also was recorded as having a married sister.
The area is situated adjacent to the Albany Public Library and the Albany Town Square. It often hosts local markets. [3] The area was once the vegetable gardens behind the old state school, which is now the Albany District Education Centre. The gardens are named after a long-serving teacher at Albany State School, Alison Edith Hartman (1906-1978). [4] She was the daughter of John Hartman, who built Albany War Memorial, [5] and she was the Principal of Albany Primary School from 1935 to 1967. [6]
The gardens contain two large Norfolk Island Pine trees and a Quercus robur tree [7] that date back to the 1890s along the southern edge. The pines are decorated every Christmas season. The statue of Mokare was erected in 1977 as a memorial to the Noongar man who helped he early settlers maintain a peaceful coexistence with the traditional owners. A series of community sculptures were set around a granite outcrop in the gardens in 1989. These include large, century-old timbers are from the original own Jetty that symbolise Jetty, ships loading cranes and other agricultural machinery to acknowledge the importance of shipping and agriculture in the early development of the town. A Peace Pole, featuring the message May Peace prevail on Earth, at the rear of the gardens was erected in 2011 as part of the Harmony Day celebrations. [8]
Quercus robur, commonly known as common oak, pedunculate oak, European oak or English oak, is a species of flowering plant in the beech and oak family, Fagaceae. It is native to most of Europe west of the Caucasus. The tree is widely cultivated in temperate regions and has escaped into the wild in scattered parts of China and North America.
The Noongar are a constellation of peoples of Indigenous Australian descent who live in the south-west corner of Western Australia, from Geraldton on the west coast to Esperance on the south coast. Noongar country is now understood as referring to the land occupied by 14 different groups: Amangu, Ballardong, Yued, Kaneang, Koreng, Mineng, Njakinjaki, Njunga, Pibelmen, Pindjarup, Wardandi, Whadjuk, Wiilman and Wudjari.
Menang is a traditional dance of the Tikar or the Semi-Bantu group of people from the Adamawa mountains of Cameroon.
