Daniel85

I love Eastern Park. Some of my earliest memories are of family Christmas gatherings under its comforting, grandfatherly trees. I remember a Christmas party from when my grandma used to work at Thomas Jewellers in the 80s. One of her co-workers wanted to pinch and kiss my 4-year-old cheeks. I was terrified. I tangibly, viscerally recall bolting through the ‘forest’ and trying frantically to climb an old oak to escape her clutches.

And of course, good ol’ Geelong High School is right next to the park, so I have a lot of memories from that time of my life.

Probably my favourite thing about Eastern Park is the wooden playground situated smack-bang in the middle of it, and the twin treehouses that made it such an awesome place to play.

Recently, I took the circuitous drive through Eastern Park for the first time in a long time. I’ve always liked driving through the park. It’s so relaxing, and invites reflection. That’s where I first learned to drive, stopping and starting in the filtered golden light on a winter afternoon, pushing mum’s old Falcon as fast as I was allowed (65 Ks! Watch out, Speed Racer!) along the wide, serpentine roads.

I thought I’d stop off for a visit to the old treehouses on my way through, but when I got there I was met by the sight of a new, fenced-in play area that looked like something from an inner-suburbs Melbourne primary school. I couldn’t believe it at first; I drove around a bit, second-guessing myself and hoping I’d just taken the wrong side-road (it is a big park). But no, it was the right place.

The feeling I got from the realisation that the treehouses were no more was the same as when my dad told me that Magic Mountain in Adelaide had been demolished for a ritzy new waterfront development. I’ve been lucky enough in life not to have lost any people close to me, but when I inevitably do I know it’ll put stuff like this in perspective. It still hurts, though.

My mum’s into the scrapbooking craze at the moment (sweeping the nation!), and she’s always saving photos she comes across that she knows I’ll enjoy. The best yet is a photo from an old family Christmas lunch in Eastern Park, circa 1998…  

To the left is our old ‘83 Telstar, which was handed down to me as my first car, but has since been consigned to the scrapyard. In the middle is my stepdad, camcorder in hand, and to the left is one of the twin treehouses.

I don’t know when they were built, or exactly when they were pulled down, but at least I have this photo to remember them by.

I used to love clambering up onto the roof, by way of the support posts on the side. It’s only like 8 feet up, but as a kid it felt like I was in one of those really high-up huts you can glimpse from the Ewok Village scenes in Return of the Jedi.

The fact that there were two of them, joined by a raised walkway, made for some great capture-the-fort battles. Errol Flynnish swashbuckling with sticks, lobbing pinecones at the enemy fort, leaping over the side as your fort was overrun by bandits.

Whenever I wagged class in high school, I’d walk through the park and read in one of the treehouses. I distinctly remember skipping Psych one morning in Year 11 to go read The Outsider. Kind of appropriate, except for the murder part.

I also used to like reading the graffiti inside the treehouses, laughing at the vulgarity and wondering at the lives of the people who’d sat there drinking or smoking or alone before me. I never left any graffiti or carvings, but even if I had been inclined to that sort of stuff it wouldn’t have been up for long.

The new play area that’s replaced it seems so bland and lacking, although I didn’t see much of it, because, honestly, I didn’t really feel like sticking around there too long. I understand that the old wooden playground was getting old, maybe rotting, but it always seemed pretty robust to me. I don’t know if safety concerns brought the treehouses down, or whiny yuppies complaining about the untrendy sight of it, or if it was just ambitious city councillors trying to make their stamp on Geelong.

I don’t know if perhaps it’s better that I didn’t know about the redevelopment beforehand. It would have been nice to go sit on the roof one last time, maybe rip off one of the planks as a souvenir. On the other hand, it would have been dreadful to know that they were coming down and that I could do nothing about it. 

More than any melancholy longing for my own memories of the treehouses, it makes me sadder to know that no little kid will ever be able to climb up on the roof and feel like king of the world, that no drunk teenagers will ever leave ‘ring a root’ messages on the walls, no bands of kids will ever wage ad-hoc warfare in the trees, and that no awkward GHS student will ever be able to wag class and find refuge in the treehouses again.

Any of you other Geelongians remember the Eastern Park treehouses? Or has anyone else had another sacred place from their childhood demolished?

I was having Deep Thoughts about comics history while sitting at Geelong Station for almost two hours this afternoon (long story*), and I started thinking about the ‘metal epithets’ applied to various times in the long history of this business we call comics.

We’ve had the Golden Age, the Silver Age, and the Bronze Age– but what of the succeeding eras?

I think the 90s definitely has to be the ‘Adamantium Age’, for reasons I don’t have to explain to anyone who’s had even one eye on popular culture in the last two decades.

As for the current era; that’s easy. The ‘Aluminum Age’. Recycling, get it?

Bah! It’s funny if you’re a comics fan. (Please don’t ask any comics fans, though, in case they tell you it isn’t.)

*I got there at probably the worst time of the day for travelling to Melbourne, right after the 12-oh-something had just left. The lady at the ticket counter told me the next train wouldn’t be until 1:53, and sold me my Off-Peak ticket. ($3.70, how’s that for cents-per-kilometre?!) Anyway, I settled in at a table to get a head start on a Lit assignment (although I don’t know if you can really call it a ‘head start’ when the essay questions were released 3 weeks ago…), and before I knew it the Station Master’s proper voice crackled over the comm. “The next train to Southern Cross Station will depart Platform 3 at 1:53. Passengers are advised that this is a Peak service…” Hold on! What le fuck? Peak?!

I went back to the ticket counter to ask if I’d heard correctly. I had. I then asked when the next Off-Peak service was… 2:33. Already feeling like a bit of an idiot for inquiring about something clearly announced over the comm mere seconds beforehand, I just went back to my table and waited for the Off-Peak service.

So many questions. Why did the stupid ticket lady make a point of informing me about the time of the next train, and then sell me a ticket I couldn’t use on it? Why didn’t I just pay the $1.50 extra for a Peak ticket? Why doesn’t Channel 7 do a prime-time, grown-up version of A*Mazing, with James Sherry as the host?