Families who had to make do at the Ruth Park Playground in Coombs will welcome the installation of a toilet block at the popular destination park, but they will have to hang on a wee bit longer for the project to be completed.

The site is fenced off, and landscaping remains to be completed before the toilets can open in June, when it won’t be necessary for parents and carers to interrupt play to make an emergency stop behind a tree or leave the park altogether.

The $7 million nature play park opened in October 2022, but the lack of toilets and inadequate parking soon became hot topics for visitors from across Canberra and beyond.

That decision was born out of compromise following input from nearby residents during the public consultation, who didn’t want a destination playground on open space next to Holden Creek Pond. However, they argued that if it were to be built, it should not have facilities that could attract poor behaviour or crime.

A petition to the Legislative Assembly calling for toilets emerged after ongoing social media and community pressure, attracting a strong response.

The playground was labelled an embarrassment for not having adequate facilities for such a large and popular destination facility.

Last year’s ACT Budget funded the toilet project. It includes two unisex accessible toilets with baby change tables and artwork on its external walls.

The Clements family from Crookwell – Jessica, Isaac and young Hugh: “Silly if they didn’t have toilets.”

On Wednesday, the Clements family from Crookwell – Jessica, Isaac and young Hugh -were enjoying the playground for the first time.

They are visiting relatives in Holt and made the quarter-hour trip to Coombs after finding the playground online.

Ms Clements said there should be toilets at every park.

“I think it was silly if they didn’t have toilets,” she said.

“All the parks we’ve been to lately have had toilets, so we haven’t had any problems.”

Coombs resident Ebony was visiting with her nine-month-old daughter Amelia.

She said the playground had become a destination for people outside of the area.

“Clearly, they’d need toilets, but the idea of not having toilets was to try and prevent it from becoming a destination,” Ebony said.

She did not know what the government was thinking when it planned a playground like this.

There were still not enough parking spaces to cater for people who were not local, Ebony said.

However, at Amelia’s age and living only a 10-minute walk away, having toilets was not yet an issue.

She said parents having to find a tree when their children needed to go was “not great”.

Site works commenced in February 2025 with the removal of two trees to enable connection to the sewer.

The completion of the toilets project will draw a line under a long-running planning issue in Coombs, but the parking situation is still to be resolved.