Even if we didn't know each other at the time, this park was a big part of our childhood.

Trang sometimes came here for walks with her parents and her brother in the pre-internet era when every child used to go outside in the afternoon and play tennis or cricket or skate at the park.

Jacqueline would come here some late afternoons with her dad and kick a soccer ball around until the mosquitoes came out and the sky got dark. Once they were flying a bright orange kite around and it flew into a neighboring house, luckily it came flying back over the fence and Jacqueline got to keep her kite.

I used to walk at least once a week here with my family, each of my cousins on a scooter or a bike. I remember looking at the stream that ran underneath the bridge every time I went and just watching the water run from the giant cement pipe and over the rocks. One time we were looking at the creek and we'd left out bikes and scooters somewhere so we could play and my cousin's scooter got stolen and I got so mad because he was going to give it to me but it was gone.


Of course, we still continue to make memories here together.

In year 10, Trang and I had a commerce class together and the task was to create a video or perform something about employment. So naturally, we grabbed Trang's DSLR (Chestnut) and recorded a video parodying "Call Me Maybe" (which, to this day, makes me cringe every time I hear it). We had a few scenes - one involving Trang running across the expanse of the park flailing her arms in desperation and another had us taping a lemon to a tree and sniffing it (I can't even remember why anymore).

At one point in year 11 we decided to get "fit" and tried "jogging". We woke up before sunrise, sending each other messages about how it was too cold to wake up and go out for a walk that day, but end up going anyways and complain about how tired we were, but we still had the energy in us to gossip for hours. It felt really refreshing to wake up that early, it gave us so much more time to do things during the day.

Once we had a picnic, which included a bucket of KFC chicken, a few sandwiches, some chips and lollies and a litre of coca-cola while we laughed at the people jogging past us and how we were supposed to be them. Never happened.