Celebrating 20 years of play

By Lachlan Ellis

It’s hard to believe, but Maddingley Park’s Adventure Playground will be 20 years old this month, and the original committee are arranging a celebration for the whole Moorabool community.

After about two years of planning and fundraising, construction on the Adventure Playground began on Wednesday 9 October 2002, with a mammoth effort from over 2,000 volunteers getting the playground done by Sunday 13 October.

Former Moorabool Mayor, Michael Tudball, was one of around 20 members of the original community committee that organised the building of the playground, and said the project was the best community project he’d ever taken part in.

“It was the best thing I’ve been involved with. We were very organised, we had two general coordinators, myself and Michael White, we were both in the Bacchus Marsh Fire Brigade. We sat around probably in 2000 and said, ‘Geez we’ve got crap playgrounds around Bacchus Marsh, what can our kids do?’,” Mr Tudball told the Moorabool News.

“It sort of started from there, with about half a dozen fire brigade members and their families, then we put the call out. We had fundraisers in St Bernard’s Hall and the Public Hall to raise money, and put in for a grant from Sport and Rec Victoria and got $125,000. We basically had to match that…in theory the project cost $250,000, but in actual cash it probably cost $150,000. The rest was donated time.

“We had people from Melton come up, and we had a lot of people come from Ballan and a lot of support from Ballan [in building the Adventure Playground]. So it certainly wasn’t just a Bacchus Marsh thing, it was right across Moorabool Shire.”

The community celebration of the Adventure Playground’s 20th birthday will be a fairly low-key affair, but Mr Tudball said it was important to recognise the anniversary, and the outpouring of community support that made it possible.

“It’ll be pretty laid back. We want the community to come down and play on the playground, we’re hoping to have a coffee cart there too. I’ve got two kids that are 30 and 31 now, that were playing on it when we built it,” he said.

“It’ll be sort of a reunion, to look back and see what the community was able to do 20 years ago. It’s a pretty significant structure, to be all put together by volunteers and last 20 years, with the great help of the Lions Club of Bacchus Marsh and Moorabool Shire Council.

“We really want to thank the community. The committee did a lot of work, but we couldn’t have done it without all those volunteers.”

The event will be a casual, drop-in affair, beginning at 10.30 am on Sunday 9 October.