Located in the southern suburbs of Sydney, Oatley Park sits within a bush setting with great significance to local residents. The design challenge was to create a new play space that was entirely sensitive to the surrounding bushland context, while also introducing a challenging, contemporary and genuinely inclusive play experience for visiting families to enjoy.

One of the more specific challenges was how to best design the hero play tower so the load-bearing support structure was concealed from view, creating the sense of touching the ground lightly.

Conditions at the site were also difficult, with shallow rock requiring the creation of an innovative footing solution.

In addition to creating the new play and shade structures, Fleetwood was also tasked with managing the soft and hard landscaping works surrounding them.

With landscaping falling outside of our typical scope, this required considerable adaption of our usual project management processes to effectively deliver all of the elements on time and on budget.

Our other major challenge was time. As a high-profile community park with a large number of visitors, it was essential to minimise closures and disruptions. To do this, a carefully staged installation process was undertaken.

One of the project’s biggest innovations was the way we approached the community consultation process, collaborating with a leading nature play education specialist to implement a comprehensive community engagement plan.

At a design level, the desire to use resourced timber bush poles for columns required our engineers to create an innovative approach to footing and connection details that still aligned with the overall design intent.

• 12-metre play tower and slide, flying fox and giant timber pole swing set
• Giant accessible adventure walkway with multiple play decks & worm tunnel
• Toddler zone, breakout teen zone & soft fall zones
• Four shade shelters (Targa™) & picnic furniture
• Extensive hard and soft landscaping

Oatley Park is serviced by a busy shared road with vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians all using the same narrow roadway. Accordingly, vehicle movements to and from the worksite had to be very carefully managed.

Preserving the natural bushland was a significant factor for Council and the use of tree protection fencing with strict adherence to Australian Standards was mandatory for the entire construction period. Early on in the project, we also commissioned a Review of Environmental Factors (REF) Report, providing a detailed analysis of the site’s environmental profile, potential environmental impacts to be aware of and recommended actions to mitigate those impacts.