Queens Park Playground

Queens Park Playground is a large, extensively equipped play area inside Invercargill's 81 hectare Queens Park, built around a multi play structure with slides plus a wide spread of swings, spinners, and a themed Wonderland Castle zone, suiting ages from infant through primary school.

Equipment

The main structure runs a range of slides alongside a hamster wheel, large carousel, basket swing, carriage swings including an infant swing, a horse rocker, rope swing, glider, supernovas, rockers, and a dedicated accessibility swing. A paddling pool sits adjacent to the play area. Toddlers are catered for separately through the basket swing, infant swing, large carousel, junior slide, and carriage swing, while a Wonderland Castle themed zone with castle walls and multiple slides forms a separate play area within the wider site.

Access and Inclusion

Continuous soft artificial matting covers the play surface, allowing wheelchairs and pushchairs to move freely across the site, and a dedicated wheelchair accessible swing is installed alongside the standard equipment. A manual wheelchair can be borrowed at no charge for up to two hours from the Cheeky Llama Cafe on site, donated by Age Concern Southland. Multiple sealed, step free paths through Queens Park connect directly to the playground.

History and Cultural

The land beneath Queens Park was known to Maori as Taurakitewaru, also recorded as Waihopai Bush on early European maps, part of the podocarp and swamp forest that once covered central southern Southland. Chief Surveyor John Turnbull Thomson laid out the park in 1857 as part of Invercargill's original town plan, and the Feldwick Gates at the main entrance remain one of the city's most recognised landmarks.