Playgrounds Park Warners Bay

Playgrounds Park is an impressive warehouse filled to the brim with skateboarding awesomeness. The park is spread fairly tightly over a decent sized warehouse and it all starts with a cracking 2.5ft mini (with hump). This thing is just perfect for anyone starting with transition skateboarding, a silky smooth surface with coping that sits beautifully. In fact it’s such a perfect mini that anyone can have great session just banging around, you really have to check this thing out – it’s that much fun.

Leading on from the mini is an L shaped plywood street section. It features a smattering of stairs, rails, quarters, banks and a euro and although it’s tight, it works well and links up beautifully with the Mini Bowl.

The Mini Bowl is like the bigger, more beautiful version of the mini ramp. Its about 3ft deep but includes a nice little extension at the far end. The coping is a little bigger and you certainly notice it more, but thats a good thing. The transitions are tighter and once again the surface is perfect (it’s called Skatelite, it’s amazeballs).

Beside the bowl are a couple of big dipper styled roll-ins, one looks about 1oft and leads to a soft rubber landing and some bigger transitions. The other scales around 15ft and leads to an epic foam pit. These are heavily geared towards scooters and BMX’rs, but there’s plenty of airs and grabs you can be working on – so check them out.

But wait, there’s more! Beyond the epic roll-ins and mini’s there’s an extra special 6ft half-pipe. Hiding out the back, away from the scooters and juniors lies the final piece of the puzzle, a wonderfully crafted half-pipe and given the limitations of the space it provides enough to keep the hardcore skater dudes more than happy. While it lacks the Skatelite surface (its plywood) it’s otherwise perfect in every way, and even though it doesn’t quite hit vert – its killer.

Oh, there’s also some impressive trampoline’s, a bunch of lounges and even a hangout area for the mum’s and dad’s… and the promise of much more to come. Limited free parking and plenty of amenities/food nearby make tis one awesome day out!

Swansea Skatepark

Swansea Skatepark has to be seen to be believed, its a seriously epic skatepark and one of the best we’ve had the pleasure of skating so far. Part of its beauty is that was designed and built by Convic who continue to create stunning and thoughtful skateparks all over the country.

In detail, Swansea Skatepark was only finished in early 2011 and features a long list of banks, quarters and transitions ranging from 3ft – 5ft that create the outer rim of the park. The banks are littered with hips, euro-gaps and fast sliding ledges There’s also a 6-stair staircase with hubba ledges a pier 7 ledge. But wait that’s not all, to round out the North end of the park there’s also an epic 5ft bowl with stunning transitions and stomping coping. Just awesome!

The surface is slick and smooth and all the coping and steel edging fast. There’s a lot of BMX’rs and scooters there but equally as many skaters and at times it can get pretty chaotic… but you just have to deal with that.

Plenty of free parking around, amenities nearby and some impressive fish and chips down the road. When you’re done here, not too far away is another Convic special at Wallsend. Yes!

Windale Skatepark

Windale is actually almost, kind of two skateparks… both are the typical suburban pre-fab.

Skatepark No 1 is the older one that is essentially un-skatable due to the pebbled tar surface that the quarters/banks have been plonked on. Its probably usable for a BMX, but only just. The park features one very basic quarter, two very basic banks and a ‘fun’ box. They all stand at around 3.5ft high.

Skatepark No. 2 is officially known as the Windale PCYC Skatepark, but it’s literally 50 metres from the other Windale skatepark. The PCYC setup is much newer and features a basic 1-way course with a slow bank that has a couple of deeply set-in rails and grind bars. And at the bottom end the usual pre-fab 3.5ft quarter pipes.Very limited.

The is supposed to be a tough neighborhood but the locals were fine the day we visited, lots of young teens on scooters mostly. Plenty of free parking but its in the middle of nowhere so not really anything else close by.