Putney Park

Love putney park! It is a great place for family picnics with beautiful waterviews in the background. You can sit and watch the boats rock in the bay while your snags sizzle away on the electric barbeques. There are large grassed areas for running and kicking a ball plus you can keep the kids entertained with the two fun playgrounds. For the warmer days there is a fun splash paddle pool for the kiddies. The water play area has two nicely landscaped shallow paddling pools with a little river running between them. Definitely worth a visit for a family fun day out!

When it comes to parks in Sydney focused at families, this one sure raises the bar. While my first impression was terrible, that quickly changed.
Out for a bit of a drive on the weekend my family and I ended up on the other side of the river from this park. While there was an awesome area for picnics at the Wangal Centenary Bushland Reserve (review
), it did not have any playground area for the kids to burn off some energy. So we jumped back in the car, waited 5 min for the ferry to let us on, and then crossed the rivet over to Putney park.
One of my friends from twitter had suggested this park as a great place to take the family, so I thought it worth a try. Parking the car at the start of the park it really looked nothing special. The first thing I saw was a massive slippery slide… but the angle was such that the kids had to force themselves down it. Maybe good for little kids?
In any case, seeing a glimpse of the water through the trees I figured it was worth a walk down there to have a look. Finally finding some stairs down, the park opened up in to a wide grassy section with BBQs and covered tables. You could probably fit a couple of hundred people down here if you so desired. It was massive, and basically right on the water.
But it did not finish there. As we walked around the bay, past the toilet blocks, we could see a climbing gym and a heap of things to keep the boys occupied. That said, they did not even touch the climbing area as up some stairs and towards the happy screams of kids was a massive water feature. Basically it has two wading pools connected with a stream.
It is a little bit worrying to see so many rocks around, so close parental supervision is required, but my boys stripped off straight away and started splashing to their hearts content. Hell, this place even has a water slide.
This place has to be one of the best parks I have found in Sydney. It is worth checking out.