The City of Boroondara had announced on its website in recent weeks that the playground at Central Gardens – known locally as Rocket Park — was scheduled to be removed and rebuilt as part of a playground replacement program.
However,following the community outcry,City of Boroondara director of places and spaces Daniel Freer said in a statement that keeping the rocket had been added to the options for the playground redesign.
“At this point,we can legitimately say that council is giving serious consideration to keeping the existing rocket at Central Gardens,but this rocket will require some modifications to meet current national safety and compliance standards,” Mr Freer said.
The council’s website isseeking feedback on how to “acknowledge” the rocket,but refers to “a rocket” not “the rocket” in saying it would seek views on how to “keep a rocket ship and/or space theme as a fundamental element of the new playground design”.
State opposition planning and local government spokesman Tim Smith,who lives not far from the Rocket Park,which sits just outside his Kew electorate,said “the rocket park should not be changed in any shape or form”.
He said that Kew and Hawthorn residents had contacted him “in great numbers demanding that the park not be changed and the rocket stays”.
Mr Gannon fears if a replica rocket was installed,it would be shorter,blander and made of plastic. The current steel one has a “special quality”,he said.
He said its current height allowed children to safely test their limits,“and bit by bit they gain in confidence”.
Mr Gannon believes the rocket is one of dozens of similar rockets installed in playgrounds across Australia in the 1960s,inspired by the space race.
His petition claims that council plans to “tear down” the rocket “and replace it with something much less fun”.
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Longtime Hawthorn resident Kevin Slattery,80,in commenting on the petition,said the rocket was “extraordinarily popular and[it] would be a travesty to remove it.”
Sarah Frankpitt,51,of Canterbury,who also signed the appeal,toldThe Age she “couldn’t believe they were thinking of getting rid of it”.
She had “great memories” of climbing the rocket as a teenager in the mid-1980 and her own two daughters played there in the 2000s,too.
Ms Frankpitt said playgrounds had become “so PC[politically correct] it’s just ridiculous”.
She said climbers of the rocket got a thrill from being up fairly high,but it was “completely safe”.
“If it isn’t broken it doesn’t need to be fixed,” Ms Frankpitt said.
Hawthorn Historical Society secretary Elizabeth Yewers said the rocket was “a historical part of Hawthorn and should be preserved in some form”,even if was moved and no longer used as play equipment.
The public have until February 21 to make submissions on the design of the new playground.
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