In 2014, Alec Duncan from Child’s Perform New music wrote two excellent and unforgettable web site posts about Katanning All Ages Playground. You can read through them in this article and in this article. I was mesmerised. The structures are exclusive and rather diverse from just about anything else I had at any time found.
In 2015, when I realised that an old faculty good friend lived just more than an hour from Katanning, I realized I had to go to and see for myself what this playground was like. The website article below talks about my working experience of the check out. It was a bittersweet visit with so much very good and so substantially unhappiness that it experienced been neglected above the years.
Nevertheless in 2020, the playground was wholly refurbished. I have not been to see it, but the internet site consists of some particulars and the movie beneath exhibits that the refurbishments have taken account of the legacy of the web site and first participate in characteristics. For instance, there is a modernised spiral slide and a substantial wavy slide which even now has ladders that will give a “spacey” truly feel to entry it. The video is really quick and it’s worth stopping and starting it to get a appear at all the attributes inside of the web page.
Soon after some reflection, I have made the decision to leave the original site post untouched as I really feel the commentary captures both equally my ordeals and some vital points in relation to playgrounds which are nonetheless worthy of reflection. Love the journey down memory lane…
The first All Ages Playground was modelled on the Grant Park Playground in Monash, South Australia. A Fb page has lots of constructive reminiscent responses remaining by the 300K readers for each calendar year that designed Grant Park a go-to playground in the Eighties. The Enjoy Scapes site has a awesome put up and the YouTube clip is certainly really worth viewing as is this 1:
Katanning is a smaller sized edition of Grant Park and it is unclear who actually built it, when, or how it arrived into currently being. My intestine experience is that it should have been effectively-just before the Nineties which is when worries close to playground protection and litigation burst on to the scene. The odor of the steel and sweat on my palms reminded me of my childhood experiences enjoying on the zig-zag, the witches’ hat and climbing frames of the Seventies. The narrowness of the structures and heights also took me back down memory lane.
The buildings that have not been removed are suitably robust. Sadly, it seems that calendar year-on-yr the playground is currently being dismantled. As the buildings come to be unsafe, they are getting cordoned off or eliminated altogether.
For example, in the photo previously mentioned, the significant rope with a knot at the end, has not been replaced. It’s a metal equivalent of a huge tree swing and similar constructions can also be found in experience playgrounds – a excellent example becoming the swing system at Glamis.
Normally, one particular does not travel midway about the planet only to appear at the playground and take a few of pictures. I took my time to test out all the different slides, rockers and seesaws and swings. The scariest little bit is climbing the ladders. These days, in modern playgrounds, you come to feel secure and shielded when climbing to a top. At Katanning, the diploma of publicity is absolute. So even though I was only climbing to perhaps two-thirds of the height of the Macquarie Lake Variety Playground Mineshaft slide on any one particular composition, it felt a ton additional challenging. Set it this way, there was NO WAY I was heading to allow go or mess about.
As time went on, I commenced to change to the publicity and it started to truly feel additional ordinary. What this informed me is that when we press ourselves we can acclimatise. Just like currently being on a rock experience, you adapt to the environmental problems in which you discover oneself. It did make me chuckle as I realised that even the 30ft constructions would be viewed as “hazardous” by some overzealous safety officers and would probably involve helmets and staying roped up.
As I wandered around, screening, checking out and photographing, I was intrigued by the layouts. Each and every slide was somewhat distinctive. For instance, in the photo down below you can see the overlapping metal plates. This is like a rumble strip. Higher than you can see light waves. The most significant slide, which is out of use, was a double a single that folks could go down side–by-side.
The constructions had been misleading. Usually speaking the greatest types ended up like mild giants. Despite the fact that the actions ended up uncovered, the basically incline of the slides was astonishingly gentle. I believe employing hessian (burlap) sacks would make for a lot quicker rides. I’m confident at minimum one particular particular person will have tried using sitting down on a skateboard to go down 1!
The “satellite” higher than seems like just one of the quickly playground rides exactly where you are whizzed about. The challenge listed here is not operating on it to make it go spherical. It’s not a especially quickly trip. It’s doing work out how to get into the construction. There is no gate and no steps. You have to hoick you up and in by way of the horizontal bars. Or simply hold onto the outside… which I observed a team of young children executing.
The large tractor tyre swing was a large ambling framework. It usually takes a large amount of ability to get it going and swinging significant. I could not get it to swing much a lot more than a foot both side of the A-body – and that was standing up and going for it. Thus there is a lesson right here about the arc of a pendulum and its oscillation.
Nevertheless, some of the most innocuous seeking constructions were being significantly wilder. The gate publish underneath is a fantastic instance. It whizzes all-around extremely rapidly and in whole flight, you need to have to dangle on quite challenging.
A curious quirk is that the structures were genuinely tricky to photograph with my Iphone. The scaffolding-like design means that they mix into the landscape pretty perfectly. There is no garish colors.
All-in-all, this was a considered-provoking stop by, tinged with unhappiness. I was reminded once yet again, we have packaged and canned so many experiences – common adventurous ones or otherwise – that any aspect of actual physical risk is massively diminished. I felt Katanning Playground reminded me of the need for diversity of playground activities and to problem terms such as “safety”, “danger”, “risk” and “hazard” and all those other unfavorable connotations that are routinely uttered alongside play. Most likely its time to assessment the playground criteria, not in terms of safety language but in conditions these types of as “freedom”, “positive memory creators”, “space to be”, “enabling”, “empowering” and “fun.” That may assist us rethink what the intent and perform of a playground actually is.
This blog site publish was originally released in April 2015.
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