When I lived on a corner lot, I was tempted to buy an automatic targetted sprinkler for deer, to keep people from walking across my lawn. https://smile.amazon.com/Orbit-62100-Activated-Sprinkler-Detection/dp/B009F1R0GC?sa-no-redirect=1
I never did, but I wanted to.
This is what it looked like in September (coming from the opposite direction).
The Telstra telecommunications pit and pillar are in the correct positions. The pit would end up in the footpath, which is not unusual for industrial areas.
The local council must simply have decided not to spend the money to build a footpath there, even though there are certainly people who ride and walk from Lorimer Street, which has a bike path and a bus route.
OP is confused. This is an overview of the area in question at Mary Moore Searight Park. The x marks where the OP is standing in this picture and everything in the rectangle is the protected wild flower meadow.
This is also not a state or national park. It is a City of Austin park. This dog-ear desire path is actually one of the horse paths that cut throughout the park.
I know this park. Mary Moore Searight Park does have a protected Wild Flower Meadow further South to the left of this spot by about a quarter mile. This patch is just about 20x 100ft of grass/flower area. Good on yea in spirit, but this area is in-fact not protected.
The adjacent tram line has only been open 3 years and two well worn desire paths have appeared (although the lack of rain makes them a bit hard to see)... The second one was supposed to be surfaced last year as part of the Cycle City Ambition Southern Cycle Corridor works, but that obviously hasn't happened.
Both have even made it onto OpenStreetMap (the red ones here, the asphalt ones are in blue https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/52.91096/-1.16616 )
Adults aren't even allowed to ride bicycles on the footpath in Victoria, so the tyre tracks give some indication of how unfriendly this industrial area (corner of Ingles and Turner Streets, Port Melbourne) is to all but drivers.
There's also little in the way of food nearby, and no public transport except buses.