A Spitfire has landed on the lawn at Delta Drive Playground in Waldronville, Dunedin. The streets around this reserve are named after war planes, so the council built a to-scale model of one as the playground's centrepiece.1
Equipment
The Spitfire comes minus one wing, and the council pitches it as an imaginative play piece with room for adults to sit as well.1 The council asset register lists swings, a slide, a seesaw, a spring rocker, a roundabout and a climbing frame, and the council describes the climber as one that spins.1 Rather than one big structure, the pieces sit on separate black rubber pads spread across the grass, with the plane on a cloud-shaped pad nearest the road and the spinner, rocker and seesaw further back. Reviewers are honest that there is not a lot here beyond the plane, but the plane is what children remember: "loved the airplane theme", wrote one.
Older kids get a hard-surface half basketball court beside the play area. The Saddle Hill Community Board pushed for it to give older children and teenagers a reason to visit, and the council built it; dozens of local youngsters a day used it in its first school holidays.2 The reserve is also a Pokémon Go gym, which one reviewer counts as a bonus.
Practical Info
The reserve opens straight onto Delta Drive with no fence between the play pads and the footpath, so toddlers need watching. One reviewer warns the way in is a short, steepish slope, worth knowing with a pushchair or unsteady legs. There are no toilets or car park; park on the street. Shade is thin, just a few young trees on an open lawn. There is a picnic table and bench seating, and the community board has floated adding more tables and a barbecue.2
For a flat place to ride scooters and bikes, Elwyn Crescent Playground in Green Island, about 2 km away, has an asphalt area for exactly that.1
