Cashmere playground well received

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32486, 22 December 1970, Page 18

Cashmere playground well received

By nine o’clock yesterday morning, 20 to 30 children were scrambling, squirming and climbing over and through an adventurous series of structures on the Cashmere Road reserve near Valley Road while contractors’ men were putting the finishing touches to the first professionally-designed children’s playground in the city.

The playground was landscaped and the equipment designed by Mr L. Karasek, a lecturer in sculpture at the University of Canterbury, for the Heathcote County Council, which let a contract for $10,500 to have the equipment fabricated and installed and the work done on part of the Young Estate land which Cashmere residents and the council bought about five years ago. About the only concession the new makes to the old idea of a playground is a set of conventional swings. There is a swing bridge made out of chain and logs, a maze made from concrete slabs, a pyramid of rope netting, a pile of old tyres mounted vertically; and other creations, including “worms” of fibreglass and a metal clover-leaf ideal for gymnastics. Mr W. B. Brown, the foreman for the contractors, Messrs Morgan and Pollard, Ltd, was enthusiastic when

he spoke about the new playground yesterday. “I used to work for the City Council reserves department and it distressed me to see the same old-fashioned kind of equipment being installed in parks,” he said. “You have only got to watch the children playing on this new equipment to realise that it stimulates their imagination and interest. I Would like to see this idea incorporated in other playgrounds. This place is alive, and I have even seen teenagers enjoying themselves.” The crowd of children soon grew to about 50, and two mothers with prams arrived. By the number of bicycles seen left on the grass verge, a cycle stand is the next requirement.