Wednesday Walkies: Collingwood Court Parklands

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Nina Parade

ARUNDEL

I had high hopes for this park, going off the sheer size of it on the Gold Coast City Council website, and it delivered in spades. It's definitely a "basic" space, but my dogs had an absolute ball and that's all that really matters. I would class it as, so far, the closest I've been able to find to genuine, allowable off leash bush walking.

The Council website listed it as being off the main street, but parking there wasn't my idea of an easy endeavour so I took a turn up a little side street and found a really easy point of access at the end of Nina Parade. Bonus of it being a quiet cul-de-sac with just some houses is that it made getting the three dogs out of the van an easy and stress free event- something that is not always achievable, especially with traffic whizzing by just metres away! The street parking is for two hours, but I found that to be a perfect amount of time for the dogs to have a really good run without us rushing to get back.

This whole park is unfenced, and it definitely needs to be mentioned that both "short" ends of the park have direct access to very busy main roads so owner beware. You can, however, quite easily use the park away from these roads with a bit of common sense, and there's plenty of space for dogs to run and explore without even catching sight of the road.

There's lots of natural terrain, a section of dense bush with a narrow worn trail to navigate, sandwiched in by a couple of big open grassy areas. The entrance we used also came with a massive hill that my dogs sprinted up and down; thankfully humans navigating the steep slopes is very optional as there's a nice level flat path to walk along across the top.

As mentioned at the top of this post, it's a basic space: that means no water, bins or poo bags provided that I could find so make sure you bring your own. I'd also strongly suggest a towel or two to wipe your dog down before loading them back into your car if your dogs are anything like mine, because there was lots of muddy bits and lots of patches of water that was pretty gross and apparently awesome to lie in. Also be aware of snakes, and bear in mind that with such a large amount of space encompassing dense vegetation, that you might come across other wildlife as well. It also makes spotting anything coming towards you sometimes difficult until the last minute, as we discovered when halfway on our way back to the car a German Shepherd suddenly barrelled out of the bush towards us- a lovely dog, however giving an example of how quickly you can lose a dog without a solid recall, and how potentially dangerous it can be either for that dog, or for your own if you happen to be on the receiving end of a rapidly approaching canine.