Jackson & Sam's Toilet

We definitely need to lighten the mood here at St. Murphy. Enough with that heavy shit. Even I’m getting bored with it so I can’t imagine how exhausting it must be for you.

Lets move on…

To something completely random and obscure.

So I think that my local park, or as we like to call it Jackson & Sam’s Toilet, is the coolest place in the whole neighbourhood. When we first bought our house here we thought the park was just weird and that our little community must be very strange. How wrong we were.

What makes this park special is that every hour of every day it is chockers full of kids toys! Always. And like lots of them. They are all left there for the local kids to play with and enjoy. How random is that! There seems to be an endless supply, some of them have been there for ages, others can be quite new.

Whenever we have to explain to visitors the situation with the toys no one believes us – it is Redfern after all. But this little neighbourhood is full of young families and the level of trust and security is amazingly high considering we are inner-city. Some days there are more kids in that park than there were in my own kinda class. Such an unbelievable community spirit.

So why this is top of mind for me today is that when I got home yesterday afternoon some lovely neighbour had taken the time to line them up all the toys along the garden path. How cool is that. Now that is taking some serious pride in the community park. I just had to take some photos.

My obsession with this park has been going on since we first moved in here 18 months ago. We walk Jackson and Sam in there everyday. Over summer there is not a weekend that goes by without a kids party in there. Every Friday evening all the local families get together and have vino’s and beers. How cool is that! One neighbour has set up a compost bin and another has left their BBQ in there permanently.

I have been so fascinated by this park I even did a Uni assignment on it last semester. It was a 2000 word visual research project that for me turned into a 5000 word extravaganza on the gentrification and community spirit of Redfern. I just have to get this in, yes, I got a HD for it.

But I do truly believe this park is incredibly special as it has become the backyard for all of the local families in the area. They socialise, they play, they enjoy it just the way families would a backyard out in suburbia. And I just think that is the coolest thing.