Lachlan Swamp is my favourite Centennial Park spot. The grove of paperbarks and she-oaks has a fairy-tale feel, which adds a certain lustre to the events that often take place in the reserve: weddings, children's birthday parties and christenings.

Visotors on the path of Centennial Park's Lachlan Swamp. Credit:Quentin Jones

While the whole of Centennial Park is home to 15,000 trees, and at 360 hectares is the biggest urban park in the Southern hemisphere, it's in the swamp that you truly understand the genius of its creator Sir Henry Parkes. While our longest serving NSW Premier may have worked in and helped design the Chief Secretary's building, it is his legacy shaping Centennial Parklands that he is best remembered for.

When our Father of Federation dedicated "the people's park" on Australia Day 1888, he promised the thousands gathered it would "be one of the grandest adornments of this beautiful country”. It has gone on to be our city's “green lungs” as he predicted. And no more do you feel it than in the once boggy march called Lachlan Swamp. While the rest of the leafy green manicured paths of the park have water delivered by bubblers, the swamp in the centre of the park still contains the original natural springs that fed the wetland.

It was Sydney’s main source of water from 1837 to 1859, transported to the colony through a tunnel. And when you hear the trickling stream, which blocks out the noise of the city, even the chatty cyclists circling this green oasis, it feels like a a cone of silence. Dramatic things have happened here. In 1851 it was supposedly the site of the last known public duel between Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Thomas L. Mitchell and an old Premier of NSW, Stuart Donaldson. Neither man was hit but a bullet did go through Mr Donaldson’s hat. Some misty mornings, it is easy to imagine a pistols at dawn scenario happening here.