Swamp Playground

Playgrounds and parks are healthier and more picturesque than swamps, and although excellent work has been done in this
direction in the past, there is still more to be tackled 

(Sunday Times, Perth, 19 May 1935, page 4).

For the children of Perth the wetlands were a wild playground where they could swim, catch gilgies (fresh water crayfish), hunt bird’s nests, and paddle homemade canoes. Swamps played a prominent role in childhood adventure. Remnant wetlands around the Perth metropolitan area are now regulated by restrictions against swimming or entering the water, mainly because of the high levels of contaminants present in the water and mud sediments. However up until the 1970s swamps served as playgrounds for generations of children who went canoeing, fishing, tadpoling and generally “swamping” in their local wetlands. In his book Stories From a Suburban Road, Western Australian author T. A. G. Hungerford describes finding a swan’s nest during his childhood as a swamp explorer: 

I parted the bulrushes and pushed in among them… and the rushes had sort of closed in behind me. I could hardly believe I wasn’t in the African jungles I’d read about in my Tarzan books, so still and hot and quiet. I could see nothing but the reeds and the sky above them… I found the nest alright. I really didn’t know what to expect, but I knew what it was the moment I saw it. It was like a raffia shopping basket hanging on the reeds, well above the water, and twined to four or five strong rushes to keep it up… something right behind me let out a loud honk-honk that scared me out of my skin 

(Hungerford 1983).