Some people believe making a skatepark is easy and happens relatively quickly. How wrong they are. Back in June 2010 the seed was planted to upgrade the Australind skatepark. This was not an easy task. The Shire of Harvey wanted the community to raise $50000 to help build the park. Right away Freestyle Now was in there to help with attending fundraising days and getting donations at our events and matching dollar for dollar those donations. It was hard work for the community to really get this awesome skatepark built. After 6 years the final go ahead was give but some of the government agency funding had been cut from what was initially going to be given. So it was a quick retry on design to try to accommodate a $1.3 million park down to $900000. The final design and build works well. Construction started early this year, seven years after it was seed was planted.
Dylan Schmidt with a superman over the new jump box at Australind skatepark
Nigel Heidt who was 10 and Dwight Eckersley who was 11 at the time were not happy with the inadequate portable skatepark that was in Australind. Dwight and Nigel, along with Nigel’s mother Sabine Heidt, put together a petition which they presented to the Harvey council with more than 400 signatures. If you want something you need to go and get it, and that is what they did.
Freestyle Now was there at the opening day celebrations to roll out the rad but unfortunately so was the rain. When the rain stopped we dried up parts of the park and let the radness flow. It rain again and we did it all over again and again and again. Nothing was going to stop the flow of the radness from the Freestyle Now squad and the locals attending the opening day celebrations.
Squad member Shaun Jarvis had a radio interview on ABC South West about the skatepark and that interview provides the soundtrack to some of the opening day celebration video footage, be sure to give it a listen and watch. Some photos of the day can also be found on our facebook page here
