In just six months last year, Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital treated 223 children
who had been injured in the city's playgrounds.
No accurate statistics have been kept until now, but from this pilot study, and a similar
one recently undertaken in New South Wales, safety authorities calculate that some 60,000
youngsters are being injured by playground equipment each year.
If you take the figures that we had in a survey at the Children's Hospital, and multiply that
because it's only just a small sample, you find it's a really big problem.
This design of swing is the devil of most playgrounds.
As you can see, it's got a metal, strong metal thing, which, if you were hit like that it'd
be rather like a boxer hitting you.
It's attractive for young children.
They're not to know that it's a danger and, in fact, sort of a killer in some instances.
Well, how do you get around that problem, you've got to maintain a swing, haven't you?
You get around this...
One, you've got to have proper maintenance.
But first of all, you've got to have proper design and construction.
Maintenance is a key factor in playground equipment.
This particular seesaw has been ignored.
It's full of splinters for a child to pick up, the handle is loose, and it's mounted
also on hard ground.
Another trap for young players, the steel strut on this particular witch's hat has been
allowed to break off and hang loose and again, this is set over hard ground.
These particular pieces of playground equipment can be real dangers.
The top section, particularly, if it's not maintained, can get very rusty and flakes
of rust can come down and fall in the eyes of the youngsters who are seated on the benches
below.
And in fact, that's what did happen at one Sunday school picnic not so long ago when
14 young children had to be taken to hospital for treatment for serious eye injuries.
Yet this equipment is situated in a relatively wealthy Melbourne suburb, the city of Brighton.
Some of the wealthier municipalities can do more with the rates that they've got.
But when they do do something they want to do something useful and not put up an expensive,
dangerous playground.
Most playground injuries, of course, are caused by childhood rashness and the natural urge
to experiment.
But safety authorities say there's no need for an accident to become catastrophic.
It's possible to plan for the inevitable slips and falls, they say, but not enough modern
designs are bearing this in mind.
This piece of equipment shows imagination, it's meant to be a ship.
But it has pitfalls.
For instance, a child can climb up here and then fall onto the hard ground.
Now what we should be doing is having an area of nice soft ground the children, when they
fall, don't injure themselves.
What about this piece over here?
Well, this also shows imagination, but if you look at it, it's in a pool of water.
The wood there could rot and in due course would collapse.
And it in turn needs a nice soft surface around here for the inevitable falls that children
will have with this sort of equipment.
The age of plastics, according to the experts, has given municipal authorities an excellent
opportunity to develop the ideal playground.
The colours are vibrant and alive and attractive to the young.
At the same time, with careful design, there are no sharp edges and the maintenance required
is cut to a minimum.
And the cost aspect too, they say, is extremely attractive.
If you were starting again from scratch, I doubt if the cost will be a great deal more.
Certainly the cost of the community will be much less because there'd be far fewer accidents.