A World Heritage park online: Parramatta Park Trust
Parramatta Park takes about 1.7 million visits a year. We built the Trust's site: hours, maps and what is on, the park's history, school programmes, the Trust's own publications, and booking an area of the grounds.
The park
Old Government House and the Domain sit inside Parramatta Park, one of the eleven places that together form the Australian Convict Sites World Heritage property. The Trust runs it as a public park with about 1.7 million visits a year, and as a venue, an education provider and a public body with its own reporting obligations. The site has to serve all of that.
For visitors
Most people arrive wanting one of a few things: when the park is open, how to get there, and what is in it. So hours and information, the park map and bus access sit together at the front, with what is on and the things there are to do beside them, and a newsletter for people who want to hear about the rest.
The park's history
A World Heritage listing is a claim about history, so the history is on the site rather than in a brochure: the Aboriginal history of the place, the European history, and what the national heritage listing covers.
Booking an area
Hiring part of a park is not one form. The visitor picks an area first, and what they then have to read and agree to depends on what they intend to do there. A personal trainer running sessions on the grass has a different set of conditions from an event bringing in amusement devices.
So the booking section carries the conditions of hire and the frequently asked questions in the same place as the form itself, and the area is chosen before any of it. The point is that people arrive at the form already knowing what they are agreeing to.
Schools
Education works the same way for a different audience. The section lists the park's programmes, from primary school visits to the History Hunters field work for Year 5 and the history and geography skills programme, and teachers book from there.
The Trust's own business
A public trust has to publish, and the material has to be findable years later: annual reports, plans of management, the legislation the Trust operates under, and grants of licence and easement over the park.
What this involved
The public site for a World Heritage park with about 1.7 million visits a year
Hours, the park map and bus access given the front of the site, where most visitors start
The park's Aboriginal and European history, and what the heritage listing covers
Online booking for hiring an area of the park, with the area chosen first
Conditions of hire and the frequently asked questions published beside the form
A separate school booking path for the education programmes, including Year 5 field work
An events calendar and a newsletter subscription
Trust publications: annual reports, plans of management, legislation, grants of licence and easement