Woodend Childrens Park Playground, Woodend
The park has a number of areas which are beautifully landscaped. One large area is fenced with a safety gate and contains a wooden structure with curved slide, various walkways, shop front, disks on a vertical pole, ladder, rope bridge, climbing mat, bridge, rotating cylinders with animal shapes, block steps, stepping stones, climbing wall, tunnel and vertical spiders web climbing frame. Three person rocker, lovely big beetle rocker, four swings including one with a harness, two other springers, large sandpit with mechanical digger and slightly curved slide on the side of a hill. Shaded table and seat.
There is a large real flying fox (zip line), huge octahedral rope climbing frame, six more swings, stand-on carousel for four people, cube climbing frame, rotating lotus leaf with hand wheel and swing with a wheel and net seat. This is next to another area which has a structure with a tunnel slide, unusual walkways, unusual ladders, climbing wall, normal and family size see-saws, standalone monkey bars and bike springer.
BBQs and table under a shelter plus shaded seats. Another large shelter with BBQs and tables.
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Woodend Children's Park Parkland History
At the time of the first contact between European and Aboriginal people, this land by Five Mile Creek was home to the Gunung willam balug clan of the Woi wurrung people. Their ancestors had inhabited this country for up to 30,000 years before the arrival of Europeans.
The first white settlers arrived in this area in the 1830's. They came looking for good land on which to graze their sheep and by the 1840's there were a number of large farms known as stations around Woodend and Newham.
When gold was discovered at Forest Creek (Castlemaine) and Sandhurst (Bendigo) in the 1850's, the small settlement on Five Mile Creek became an important stopping place for travellers who had struggled through the boggy tracks in the Black Forest - much feared as the haunt of thieves and bushrangers. Caroline Chisholm, soon to be known as the "Immigrants' friend", was concerned for the welfare of these families and their need for safe and cheap accommodation. She established a series of lodging places along the route to the goldfields. One of these 'shelter sheds' stood on the South West corner of this playground area.
After the gold rush finished the shed was used for early Church of England services before the first St. Mary's was built in 1859 and as a hall for various municipal meetings. Part of the playground area was later set out as a Croquet lawn and was also the site for a building which housed a generator which supplied electricity to Woodend until the late 1920's. The area was officially opened as a Children's Park in 2009.
Location
12 Nicholson Street, Woodend 3442 Map
