SYDNEY'S PARKS.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18670, 20 April 1926, Page 7

SYDNEY'S PARKS.

IMPROVING THE GFK (rsox ova. ow* coßßßCTonmrrs) SYDNEY, March 25. Hyde Park, one of Sydney's very fiw parks within the city with any claims to real beauty, will, it is expected, and fervently hoped, be vacated by the end of the year by those who have been cutting it up tor the underground railway. Although Sydney is not greatly concerned about its parks, Hyde Park, when the railway people have finished with it, will afford splendid scope for landscape effects, especially as it will become practically the centre of Sydney with the completion of the two underground railway stations oheek by jowl with it. These stations will then have as close neighbours the old Law Courts and historic St. James's Church, at the top of King street, and the old Hyde Park barracks, which now house the District and Industrial Courts. In the new lay-out of the whole of the area when the railway is completed, it is not at all improbable that a campaign will be seC in motion for the removal of the gloomy old courts in King street, so gloomy and ill-lighted that one judge has shifted his quarters rather than go blind, for the erection of new' Law Courts on the site of the present District and Industrial Courts, and for the establishment of a big garden square, with St. James's Church as its central piece, where the King street Courts now stand in all their unsightliness. It is difficult, ordinarily, to let in the light in divorce cases, but it is especially difficult in the old Divorce Court there, for it is as dark as a cellar when not artificially lighted, and oven then there is over it an atmosphere .of gloom which possibly helps the petitioning parties to look perfectly miserable and aggrieved. Sydney's parks have been handicapped, not only by the policy which has been adopted towards them, but also by a shallow soil of poor quality. The Superintendent of Parks (Mr Cooper) has now again raised the question of underground garages in Hy.de Park, as a means of removing some at least of the cars from the crowded citv streets, ft is not unlikely that the Council will carry out such a scheme, especially as it will be a good paying proposition.