Children lose play area in clean-up

Press, 12 August 1980, Page 6

Children lose play area in clean-up

The Heathcote County Council calls it a riverbank clean-up, but for a group of Beckenham children it is the loss of their, wilderness play area.

Council workmen recently cleared undergrowth and several old willow trees from a 15-metre-wide strip on the Heathcote River bank, behind Thorrington School and between Sloane Terrace and Malcolm Avenue. Now the area is covered by bare, muddy ground and untidy tree stumps — a blow for children who have long played there. “The workmen just chopped around with axes and chainsaws, generally laying the area to waste,” says Jamie Foster, aged 13, from nearby Corson Avenue.

Birdlife and a hive of bees which had settled in the area have been frightened off, hei

says. Jamie also feels that the trimming of growth has been at random and without purpose: while some rotten trees have been left, good limbs have been cut off others.

The present state of the area was an eyesore, the Heathcote County Chairman (Mr J. M. McKenzie) agreed yesterday. However, he said the job was only partly finished.

“It is going to be very attractive when finished.” he said. The wilderness area had “a certain amount of undesirability to it,” he said. The. council would put a gravel path along the bank, linking Sloane Terrace and Malcolm Avenue, plant the area with grass and possibly replant it with young trees.

Mr McKenzie said a survey of the willows would be made. After inspecting them

on Saturday, he suspected the trees were in such a poor state they were not worth saving.'

The clean-up was part of a programme to survey and. where necessary, replant all river banks in the county, he said. Attention had focused on that area after complaints from residents in Sloane Terrace, who were annoyed by the riding of motor-cycles through it, Mr McKenzie said. When the remodelling was complete, everybody would be able to use the area as a riverbank walkway. Motor-cycles would be excluded.

However, he agreed it would be “difficult to get people to believe we are tidying it up when they see the present state it is in.”

Mr McKenzie said he would see the job w r as completed as soon as possible.