Welcome to: Benny's Brisbane Skateboard Directory The site for skaters in Brisbane, Australia Compiled by Mark Brimson     Ipswich Skate Park   45 mins drive west of Brisbane   Built: 1999   Address: Griffith Rd, (Limestone Park)   To all who were involved in this project, thank you for your time and consideration, but I must tell you that you have wasted your time, not to mention all the council money in building a skate park that is practically unskatable. Please don't think I am having a dig at any people who worked on this project, but along the line somewhere things got a little bit twisted and now there is a big fat lot of painted concrete with a reputation for one of the worst recently built skate parks in Queensland, possibly Australia, but I wouldn't presume to know all of them. The park is beside the community centre in Limestone Park off Griffith Rd, central Ipswich. (Same place that held the comp on the basketball court beside where the park is now.) There are facilities close by and everything is nice and handy, but I am not going back there for a rather long time, if ever.   Now, to explain why I do not like this place... I would say that it would have looked very good on plan, but (I would think) they have cut the horizontal dimensions, the way some other parks have been "shortened" or "cost cut" but in so doing, they destroy the effort they have put in to the park in the first place. See the Coomera park as another good example of this. The layout consists of a bowl at one end, nice curves but with virtually no flat bottom in most of it. The bowl is in a kidney shape, an extended spine in one part that joins the rest of the park. When I say "extended spine" I don't mean a really long spine, I mean the two coping edges are about a foot apart, with a little platform running between bowl and street course. This would be really good if there was room for a run up to go over the gap, but as no such run up is really available, it is a little bit of a waste. Off to one side of the bowl/spine is a bumpy bank hip arrangement with no definite lines, resembling more a quarter than a bank - it looks like a big pile of dirt has just been dropped and then concrete poured over it taking on whatever shape the dirt took on the way down. On the opposite side is a little bump, more mellow, but with the same method used as the big bank, and a really chunky concrete block, no coping on the edge, and no run up to it. On the far side is a really good long bank, going a fair way from the big bank/hip up to the far end of the park. This is a really good bank to do tricks on but you have to get the right angle run up or you cannot go anywhere. Right in the middle of the place is the funniest thing of all. They have tried to make the typical transitioned fun box with rail running down the middle, but the quarters are so steep I found it easier to just ollie right up onto it rather than roll up it like a wall ride. The "rail" element in the middle is one "O" shaped round rail that runs right the way from one end to the other, going down at a very steep angle into the ground past the box arrangement. To rail slide this like a normal handrail would pile drive you into the ground before you knew what hit you, that is how steep it is. The whole park was spray painted with pictures and graf art which made the surface very slippery in most places, so you had to land just right or you go out sideways from a trick, and the average distance between things was about two to three metres, most of it being less.   I try not to be too negative about this place, but to really understand it, you should go out there ONCE and see for yourself what it is like. I could skate it well enough, once I was used to it, (I went there for two days straight to try and get the hang of the place, and a couple of times since) and came away at the end with a couple of grazes and a feeling of happiness that I had mastered it as far as I was concerned but greatly disappointed that the council had seemingly not really done much in the way of finding out how parks are really made or put together.   I am just glad that the Bundamba park, which is so close in area to the Ipswich park, turned out so much better in design and layout. If you are going out Ipswich way, have a look, but don't say I didn't warn you...     email me at:   mbrimson@yahoo.com ***** (click here to send me mail) *****   Click the "BACK" button to return to the previous menu.