Opening of Halliday ParkPrint Page

The plaque commemorates the opening of Halliday Park and the installation of the first playground in 1937 and the developments to the park which began in 1985. 

When tea time came at Ringwood last night 300 children from the Mitcham Junior State School didn't turn up. Worried parents sent the elder children to look for them. Meals were kept in the ovens and kettles simmered on the stoves.The elder children didn't return either. The fathers came home from work. The meals still waited. Impatient, both fathers and mothers—100 of them—went to look for their children. Some of the fathers came back and some didn't, and most of the mothers returned home to turn off the gas or snatch a hurried bite of food before they went out again. Few children wanted to come home for tea at all. . . .

All because the Shire of Tunstall had equipped a new playground in Mitcham Road, Mitcham, and opened it yesterday. According to Cr. J. K. Lawson, of the Tunstall Shire, 150 men and women swung, slid and see-sawed there until well after 9 o'clock. The chief attraction was the new steel slide, at which a queue of children 30 yards long, from the slide to the road, awaited their turns. The playground, which is between the senior and junior State Schools, drew crowds from both, and the headmaster of the senior school (Mr Hobbs) appointed monitors to watch the younger children. The Shire is very proud of its amusement park, says the secretary (Mr H. T. Bishop). It provides for bowls and tennis, is set completely in lawn, is flood lit, and with its spring blossom background promises to be one of the suburbs most popular promenades. 
Herald (Melbourne), 9 September 1937.

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