For generations of Dunedin children, a first lesson in courage came at the top of a concrete dinosaur, peering down the long curved slide that runs from its open mouth to the grass below. That dinosaur, the centrepiece of Marlow Park in St Kilda, has weathered more than half a century of cold southerlies and countless small clambering feet, and the city has now decided it will weather one more thing, a multimillion dollar rebuild of the playground around it.
Dunedin City Council has set aside about 4.6 million dollars to turn Marlow Park into one of three new destination playgrounds, and for a time it looked as though the much loved slide might be retired rather than rescued. Councillors were handed two options, refurbish the original dinosaur and fold it into the new design, or replace it altogether with a brand new inclusive dinosaur slide. After hearing from residents, they have landed firmly on keeping the one that is already there.
The strength of feeling surprised almost no one who grew up nearby. When the plans went out for public feedback, the council received 335 submissions, and the message was blunt. As the staff report put it, “the community supported retention and refurbishment of the iconic features of the park such as the dinosaur slide and whale”, according to reporting in the Otago Daily Times. People wanted the landmark fixed, not flattened.
Councillor Andrew Simms spoke for many when he described returning to the park decades after his own childhood. “When I took my children back 50 years later, [the dinosaur slide] was still the highlight of the park,” he told the council, as reported by the Otago Daily Times. Deputy Mayor Cherry Lucas made the case for keeping something genuinely unusual rather than swapping it for an off the shelf design. “Even though the dinosaur might be old and all that, I love that we’re different from anything else,” she said, calling the slide distinctly Dunedin and a point of difference for the city.
Saving it will take more than sentiment. Project staff had the structure tested, and the verdict was not entirely reassuring. The dinosaur’s condition was described as “not great”, though probably salvageable, project manager Dr Glen Hazelton told councillors. The nearby concrete whale, another favourite, is in worse shape, with the council hearing that its tail has come off a couple of times already. Both will need careful remediation if they are to stand up to another generation of climbing, sliding children.
One of the more charming wrinkles in the consultation was a quiet split between the grown ups and the children they were speaking for. City services manager Scott MacLean told the council that it was largely adults who pushed hardest to keep the old icons, while many children were rather more interested in something fresh. The youngsters, he reported, wanted “new stuff like our parents and our grandparents got to experience”, a neat reminder that nostalgia is mostly an adult pastime and that every playground was once somebody’s shiny new thing.
The compromise the council is chasing tries to honour both instincts. Alongside the restored dinosaur and whale, the redeveloped park is set to gain climbing areas, swings and slides, a parkour zone aimed at older children and teenagers, a permanent pump track, and water and nature play spaces, with room for food trucks and shaded seating for the parents and grandparents keeping watch. A cultural narrative drawing on Pacific navigation, developed with the mana whenua design agency Aukaha, is also planned to thread through the park.
Residents did not hold back on the early concept either. Some submitters complained that the first design had too much open space and was bland and lacking colour, and pointed out that the dinosaur slide sat awkwardly apart, separated from the rest of the playground by a large open grass area. The revised plan is meant to stitch the old landmark back into the heart of the playground rather than leaving it marooned on its own patch of lawn.
Marlow Park sits on John Wilson Ocean Drive near St Kilda Beach, looking out at the southern coastline, and it has earned its nickname the hard way. The playground was developed in the early 1970s as a project led by the Dunedin South Rotary Club, and it has stayed largely unchanged for decades, which is precisely why it means so much to the families who keep coming back. For many Dunedin residents it is simply the Dinosaur Park, a place that has quietly stayed put while the rest of the city rebuilt itself around it. You can find the council’s own details for the reserve on the Dunedin City Council website, and a fuller history on its Wikipedia page.
The timing of the work is still being firmed up, with construction expected across the 2026 and 2027 period and the park likely to close over a summer while the heavy machinery moves in, before reopening in time for the season that follows. There will be disruption, and a stretch of months when the slide stands behind fencing rather than under a queue of impatient children. But at the end of it the dinosaur should be back where it has always been, mouth open, slide gleaming, ready to frighten and thrill another round of five year olds who have no idea their parents once stood in exactly the same spot.
It is a small story in the scheme of a city budget, yet it captures something most New Zealanders understand instinctively. The places we played as children become quiet anchors, and saving one of them, dinosaur and all, is its own kind of civic achievement.
Do you have a favourite memory of the Dunedin dinosaur slide, or a beloved playground landmark in your own town? Share it in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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