Romsey Ecotherapy Park Playground, Main Street, Romsey

Romsey Ecotherapy Park is the result of a community-led initiative to build an inviting and accessible recreational open space for people of all ages and abilities to enjoy a unique sensory and therapeutic experience through engagement with nature.

The park consists of an active nature space with a cubby house under the branches of a large oak tree and nature-based play elements, a climbing forest, a three metre high ropes course, extra long flying fox, birds nest swing, lookouts, hammock, balancing logs and a vertical rope climbing net.

Romsey Ecotherapy Park Playground, Main Street, Romsey

Romsey Ecotherapy Park Playground, Main Street, Romsey

It also includes an events space with a shelter with two tables, BBQs, water tap and toilets, an area showcasing several artistic features, a sensory garden, a 'woodland ramble', a hut-building frame and on-street parking to make it easy to access the park.

The Sensory Therapeutic Space features raised garden beds including plants with scents, textures and visual spectacle to engage the senses with the background therapeutic sound of running water features. Areas include a lawn, rocky gorge and labyrinth. A water play system including hand pumps, natural channels and sluice gates is complimented by the ephemeral (seasonal) billabong. There is a wheelchair accessible terraced sand pit.

Romsey Ecotherapy Park Playground, Main Street, Romsey

There are some wonderful artworks in the park including:

Romsey Water Clock with gentle flowing water and a regular chime created by Anton Hasell, the renowned sound sculptor responsible for Melbourne's Federation Bells. Gentle flowing water and a regular chime sets a person into dream of distant, magical places like that island in the middle of the lake. The sonorous chime of the bell also tunes into the ambient soundscape of the parkland, the call of birds, and the scent of plants, awakening one to nature's fresh vitality in this garden landscape.
Harmonic Bell Taps by Anton Hasell is composed of a series of brass taps protruding from a stainless steel post that allows people to open and close the water flows at their pleasure creating compositional interaction with the installation. Activated by movement sensors, each tap flows water into its own scaled bronze cup (small bells) sounding a musical octave. The bells sound the octave, the water only slightly changes pitch according to the size of the cup it splashes into.
Portal by Brigit Heller marks the entrance to the park.
The Story Telling Chair by Richard Yates which features carvings of local wildlife and books and is surrounded by a ring of carved mushrooms under a shady tree.
Cycles by Charlie Aquilina, is (at one level) a depiction of the annual cycle which occurs in every garden. At another level, it represents the cycle we experience as we pass through life and engage with our surrounds. With different features on each face of the Macedon Ranges basalt stone base, copper and torten will interact with the basalt stone and oxidize over time to a rich green patina and orange brown respectively.
The Romsey Harmonic Bell Tree by Anton Hasell brings the healing experience of chimes. The three bells are tuned to sound the C-E-G chord when patted by hand in a humming, resonant peal. A Crimson Rosella in its bright plumage, cast in bronze at life scale, perches on the top bell, ready to take flight.
Spring Leaves, Gingko Tree and Silver Leaves by Rudi Jass are kinetic wind sculptures.
The Meeting Place by Glenn Romanis is a low totem and stone sculpture.

Make sure you don't park in the area reserved for Cobaw Community Health. There is a car parking area on the east side of the playground.

This is a beautifully conceived and executed community space. Everyone who visits will love elements of the park. It's such a pity that many of the installations in the therapeutic garden area don't work any more such as the Harmonic Bell Taps.

Photos:

Photo Credit: Aerial photo by Angus Webb Ware