Where you can find Melbourne's best playgrounds

Great playgrounds have a quality of squeal, swirl and stomp. Energised children are gleefully shrill as they swirl from climbing element to roundabout, from thundering across an elevated bridge to sliding down a twisting plastic tube.

And it’s impossible to ignore the decibels of whoop emanating from the flying fox. But in all the din are eddies of quietude: The child swinging in the flat hammock; the one belly down on a rock, annoying ants with a stick; another transported to an imaginary landscape in the sand play area.

The best playgrounds also have nodes where parents can prop without being intrusive.

Mums, dads and grandparents drive distances to get their offspring to the best playgrounds which are, with few exceptions, according to Circus Oz acrobat Christian Reid, not in the inner suburbs.

He bought his preschool daughter from Reservoir to the Eltham North Adventure Playground to join the 60-70 children engaging with the award-winning facility and says they will later move four kilometres on to the Diamond Creek Regional Playground that opened in mid-March.

That vast new play place is based on a gold-rush theme and, Reid says, has a measured amount of risk in elements such as a raised parkour log climb.

The two playgrounds have made the district quite the recreation drawcard because families can make a free day’s entertainment by moving between them along the Diamond Creek bike trail.

Nillumbik Community Arts and Cultural Engagement officer Sarah Hammond says “families come from all over the state … from interstate” to experience these new-era playgrounds that were designed in response to ratepayer consultation.

“Council really took on board what the community wanted,” she says, “and it involved adventure, risk, and for kids to be able to challenge themselves in a safe environment.”

Jeavons Landscape Architects, in collaboration with Gardiner Architects and Naturform, designed the Eltham North Adventure Playground to replace the original woolshed playground which the two designers had created 26 years previously, but which was destroyed by fire in 2017.

Off the top of her head, Mary Jeavons can’t tell how many play options there are around the woolshed- themed core but says in the time that elapsed between constructions, the main changes have been the attention given to making them usable for disabled adults and children, more enticements to “play in the landscape”, and ideas around what constitutes an acceptable injury threshold.

“The bottom line,” she says, “is that we want to avoid serious injuries. Minor injuries are, to a point, acceptable. We do want children to take challenges and decide for themselves what they can master.”

OTHER GREAT LOCAL PLAYGROUNDS

Ballam Bumps Regional Playspace, Ballam Park, Cranbourne Road, Frankston: Super-colourful, multipurpose playground with plenty of skate and scooter options.

Nature Play at Royal Park, Gatehouse Street, Parkville: Logs, ropes, water play, slides, slopes, sand and rocks saw this place judged as one of Australia’s best recent developments.

Quarries Park Clifton Hill, Ramsden Street, Clifton Hill: Classic wooden fort-style park with massive slippery-dip and deep sand bedding. Picnic ground and nearby skate park.

Booran Reserve Playspace, Glen Huntly Road, Glen Huntly: Amazing $1.7-million development with a nine-metre-high double dome climbing feature.