In a strange land

On Mother’s Day, we had a family outing to what is regarded as one of the best, if not the best, playgrounds in Adelaide. I had told the girls that we were having a picnic lunch, with family friends, at a boring playground; I’m a firm believer in not building up children’s expectations, especially when they judge all playgrounds by comparison to the magificent Kowhai Park in Wanganui. So they were looking forward to the picnic, but anticipating just a swing or two, and maybe some slides, in the usual boring plastic constructo-mazes that seem to be standard playground fare these days (see generic example above right).

But as it turns out, the St Kilda playground really is marvellous fun. And dangerous. It’s the sort of playground that wouldn’t get built now, for fear of safety inspectors and accident liabilities and all that jazz. I can’t find when it was built, but it looks and feels quite old - wooden handrails have been worn smooth, and the edges of railway sleeper steps are cracking.

We arrived just on lunchtime, so we told the girls that they could play on one set of equipment, and then we would have lunch, and get fueled up for some serious after lunch play. So, they started out on these slides.

Huge. Long. Fast. Even faster if you sit on a towel or some polypropylene or even some cardboard. Even even faster faster if you are aged say, fortyish, and you weigh a little more than your daughters.

After lunch the serious play began. For the grown-ups, that is. We started on the wavy slide, which the girls enjoyed too. But the real thrill was the twisty round and round slide, that goes straight down, in a twisty sort of way, inside a hill. The entrance to the twisty round and round slide is right at the top of the hill, about twenty metres high, I think (I have no eye for heights). It’s the same hill that the wavy slide goes down from. There is a great hole straight down inside the hill, covered over with a grill, and the only way down is by slide. At the bottom, there is a tunnel to get out. There are two slides, one coiled around the outer wall of the hold, and one twisted tight in the centre. You sit at the top, and slide, and go round and round and round in a mad whirl to the bottom, then stagger out of the tunnel, shouting with laughter, and keen to do it all again.

I can personally attest that both twisty slides are enormous fun. The outer slide has about three large complete circlings around the hole on the way down. You swoop and swoop and swoop down, feeling as though you are flying. Fantastic. And the inner slide is even better: three tight circles around the very centre of the hole. You go tremendously fast, and get up dizzily at the end. You get the best ride if you can position your body at about a 45 degree angle, so that you whizz down faster than ever. I had most fun of all when our friend, also a woman of a certain age, went down one slide while I went down the other, both of us shrieking with delight, and giggling madly as we got off.

The children enjoyed the slides too.

Then there was the pirate ship. No slides this time, but it is perched right on the edge of the sea. The tide was out when we were there, but it must look very real when the water is up near it. As it was, it looked for all the world as though it really had been wrecked there. It comes complete with a brig, ‘though not a very effective one. My daughters could all get out through the bars, and even Mr Strange Land and I, and our friends, could manage to get out through the gap by the bent bar.

To top it off, two long and very fast flying foxes. The girls started out on the shorter one, but they graduated to the longer and faster one. Alas, I didn’t get a turn - I was busy catching children at the end, and taking the seat back up for the next child. By the time we had worked our way through our children, there was a long queue of other children there too, and it just didn’t seem right to push in ahead of them all, even though I was running back with the seat.

And then our friends’ pre-school daughter got lost. We had a panic stricken search for about five minutes before we found her. She had wandered off to the toddler area, in part because she has been there before and knew where to go, in part because she was asserting her independence, as children do. It was frightening, especially for our friends. So we ended up in the toddler area, which alas, is not nearly as much fun as the rest of the playground; it’s a plastic constructo-maze.

So how does it compare to the best playground in the world? Very well indeed, and our girls are very keen to go back sometime. Visually, it’s bare and bleak; it doesn’t have the soft greeness of Kowhai Park, but then again, Kowhai Park is often unusable because of the rain that creates the soft greeness in the first place. It’s not so well suited for pre-school children, although the little ones are well catered for, but I suspect that the play equipment is much more appealing for 11 and 12 year-olds, and even early teens. Kowhai Park might be just a little babyish for them. The constructions are fantastically proportioned - there’s no skimping on making St Kilda’s playground a place that gives children (and adults) a real thrill. There are the usual swings and see-saws (or teeter-totters), but they are rather dull - none of the mad joy of Kowhai Park’s octopus and whale and nursery tale constructions. Nevertheless, it’s worth visiting, and even worth making a special trip to get there (it’s about 30km from our home). We will be going again - I want a turn on the flying fox.