The park hosts two golf courses, two historic boathouses, sheds and a number of cycle and walking trails.

The location of the park at the joining of the Yarra River and Merri Creek has been an important site for the Wurundjeri Aboriginal people for a long time prior to the arrival of Europeans in Melbourne, which is commemorated by the Koori Garden on the western edge of the park, near Dights Falls.

In 1904, the Queen's Memorial Infectious Diseases Hospital was established along Yarra Bend Road, Fairfield.

In 1972 the Eastern Freeway was constructed through the middle of the park, crossing both the Merri Creek and the Yarra River.

This was highly controversial at the time, heightened by the destruction of rich history of not only Wurundjeri origin but European as well.

The park is home to many species of birds, bats and other mammals, reptiles (tiger snakes and blue tongued lizards are common) insects and fish (esp.

carp and eels) also regularly found are rainbow lorikeets, red-rumped parrots and yellow-tailed black cockatoos, water rats and brush-tail and ringtail possums.

Yarra Bend Park is also home to a colony of federally and state listed vulnerable grey-headed flying foxes.

The colony took up residence in the Royal Botanic Gardens in 1986 but were relocated to the more natural setting of Yarra Bend Park in 2003.