MOSMAN Park’s community-built Russell Brown Adventure Park is in the running for a national award after winning best minor play space at the Parks and Leisure Australia WA awards last weekend.
“We’re still developing the park, and I was just thinking how we could use two old pianos I was given recently, and if I could bring them down here so the kids could bang away on them,” Mosman Park Men’s Shed president Brett Pollock said.
Shed volunteers, Mosman Park Rotary Club members, council staff and in-kind contributions from machinery suppliers lowered the cost of the riverside park to $65,000, before it was opened to provide a challenging play environment in 2015.
Get in front of tomorrow's news for FREE
Journalism for the curious Australian across politics, business, culture and opinion.
READ NOWMosman Park Mayor Ron Norris said the park, where up to 400 children play daily, benefitted from the community’s enthusiasm.
Mr Norris said even the park’s topography allowed its designers to redirect overflow pipes for the stream in which children build dams, race twigs like boats and look for fish.
The park has trees, cubbies, swings and climbing ropes, but its undergrowth has been kept open so parents and grandparents can relax and see their children are safe from a distance.
At the WA awards, the park was recognised as the best in the state costing less than $500,000 that had involved the community, while showing landscape and structural innovation that helps childhood development.
The winners in each of the 11 categories go to the national finals to be held in Adelaide in October.