We engaged with the local community, nearby community groups and the wider public from 1 July to 11 August 2024, about the Flinders Park Oval playground replacement scheduled for completion this financial year (2024/25). Flinders Park Oval playground is a 'District' classified reserve and playground located on Hartley Road in Flinders Park.
For this playground, we engaged with you about the replacement of the play and activity tower (fort structure) and the rowboat feature. The existing swings, including the basket swing, junior & adult swing set and the standing rope swing, will remain as they are not yet due to be replaced.
The aim of this engagement was to find out how you play in this space, and what types of play our young community enjoys most so we could develop a new play design for the replacement equipment that would be enjoyed for years to come.
New play space design
Below you can see the new play features pictured for Flinders Park Oval playground, which will replace the existing play and activity tower, rocker and the wooden boat. You can also view the more detailed concept plan.
We will not be replacing the wooden boat based on the consultation feedback. View the next tab for information about this decision.
New play features
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Concept Plan
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Wooden boat removal
The existing wooden boat feature will be removed and will not be replaced, for a few reasons:
- The feature is past its useful life and must be removed or replaced.
- There wasn't a strong desire from the community that this feature should be replaced.
- It would have been very expensive to replace this feature and would have resulted in a much smaller play activity tower which wouldn't deliver all the play elements community asked for.
- Some of the community felt the funds would be better used to create a more interesting and larger playground structure.
The money saved by not replacing the wooden boat feature allowed us to provide much more play value in the replacement play structure. We were able to invest in a larger play tower with lots of different play elements that you asked for such as rope climbing, monkey bars, slides and play for toddlers. We were also able to add in some new nature play like balance logs and steppers, as well as new planting beds.
This is the wooden boat play feature that could not be kept as it was as it was deemed unsafe without significant repair or replacement. If we received overwhelming feedback this feature should be replaced, we would have considered this. While we acknowledge that some participants like the boat, others listed this as something they would change or weren't fussed about if it meant a better play structure.
Given the cost to replace this feature with something similar, there would have been very little budget left to deliver many of the play elements requested. By not replacing the boat, we were able to deliver a play structure that will offer much more play value to our young people than a single item would.
Features to remain
Summary of feedback
How you use the space and like to play
Other playground comments
Staff responses to feedback requests
Share feedback or suggestion
If you think something is missing from this play area, you can lodge feedback to make a request or suggestion via our Customer Portal.
