Highland Park Reserve Playground

A tube slide running down a grassy mound is the centrepiece of Highland Park Reserve, a quiet neighbourhood playground in the newer Highland Park streets of Mosgiel, on Dunedin's Taieri Plain. Around it sits a broad recreation lawn and a fitness circuit, so older kids and parents both get something to do.¹

Equipment

The tube slide comes down the mound with climbing grips to scramble back up, and there are timber steppers to balance across.¹ The council asset register also lists swings, a climbing piece and a roundabout, and one visitor warns the spinning top can leave you dizzy. Exercise stations with instructions line the path on the far side of the lawn, which kids treat as part of the playground.¹

Reviewers are honest that this suits school age children best. One parent of under fives found little for toddlers and wished the slide were open rather than enclosed, so families with very young children may get more out of Mosgiel Memorial Gardens.

History and Cultural

The reserve was planned with the 272 lot Highland Park subdivision.³ The Dunedin City Council set aside about $200,000 in its 2016 to 2017 budget to develop the 0.67 hectare site, after a consultation where locals asked above all for slides and swings.²

Practical Info

Picnic tables sit on the lawn, a path loops around the reserve, and a planted berm gives slightly raised views of Saddle Hill and the Maungatua range.¹ The play area is unfenced and sits near the road at the reserve's western corner, and the young trees offer little shade yet. Visitors describe it as tidy, with bins, and rarely busy, quieter than the bigger Mosgiel parks. Factory Road Playground is about 500 metres away and Willow Park under a kilometre, for a longer outing.