Gordon Park is a pocket handkerchief size site with a large number of public facilities already. At present there is a good balance between established facilities and the open space needed for spontaneous activities. Presently Gordon Park is very well utilised as follows:

Primary and Infants School sports days, picnics and excursions.
Boat launching, swimming and fishing. 
Forest walks, sightseeing and riverside walks.
Tennis Courts, children's playground equipment and jungle gym.
Picnics, barbeques and birthday parties.
Wedding ceremonies and wedding photography.
Legacy Breakfast, Australia Day Carnival and "Breakfast by the River" function.
Toilet and morning tea stops by tourist bus operators.
Family cricket, touch football, kite flying, Frisbee throwing and shuttlecock.
Meditation, snoozing, bird watching, pure relaxation and just doing nothing.

No skateboards in Gordon Park!
This small park is actually even smaller than it looks. The area to the east of the tennis courts is a "flood plain". Shortly after a downpour a 5 metre wide torrent of town storm water streams across the park making for the two drainage grates and pipe into the river.

To put a skate board facility anywhere in Gordon Park would be a cramming exercise to the great detriment of the present many park users. To put the skateboard facility in the floodplain would not only impede the flow of stormwater but likely cause flooding of the lower two tennis courts. 

The topography of Gordon Park is such that there is a magnification of any sound emanating from the park - any noise is projected and amplified to all businesses and residences surrounding the park. Gordon Park already suffers the screams and noise of the inebriated vandals, especially between 8pm- 4am on Friday and Saturday nights.

To put a skateboard facility in Gordon Park will assuredly compound the noise problem for the businesses and residents of the neighbourhood due to the extremely irritating sound of the banging of skateboards on concrete edges as the skaters perform their tricks. This noise will be present night and day. From the perspective of those businesses providing accommodation facilities, noise from a closely located skateboard facility will be a huge detraction to their business efforts and a likely lowering of profits translates to a likely lowering in property value. This is all contrary to one attested aim within the Shire Structure Plan that every effort should be made to enable Nambucca Heads, its businesses and its residents to maximise the tourism potential of our magnificent riverside and oceanside location. 

Gordon Park is a beautiful park with the river at the southern end and the rainforest at the northern end. The DCP3 expressly recommends that the view lines be kept open in community lands for the enjoyment of all residents and visitors alike. 

To put a skateboard facility in Gordon Park in either of the two flat open spaces not affected by storm water flows would interrupt the views to the river and run counter to the recommendation in the DCP3.

Skateboard structures inevitably attract graffiti "artists" who seem to have a compulsion to totally graffiti the structure and all other nearby structures. This is precisely what happened during the early morning hours of the big skateboard competition on 21st April 2007. See photographs in this website and also refer Police Incident No. E433634890 of same date.

A graffiti covered skateboard facility in Gordon Park will seriously detract from the current value that the park has as a tourist and recreational park. Furthermore the guaranteed flow on graffiti to the other park structures, residences and business premises in and around the park will exacerbate the present situation. There is already an intolerable amount of time wasted and money spent on remedying, and at times only part remedying, graffiti and other vandalism. 

Skateboarders can be observed skating down the middle of exceptionally steep Bay Street and around the blind downhill bend of Wellington Drive on their way to the river and beaches.

A skate board facility in Gordon Park will not only attract a lot more skateboarders to the park but undoubtedly more skateboarders to the challenge of the roads bordering it. It is amazing there has not been a serious accident so far. More, reckless skateboarders on Wellington Drive and Bay Street points to a disaster sure to eventuate. It should be stressed that this could be a disaster not only for the skate boarder but for a motorist driving along Wellington Drive totally surprised by a group of skateboarders hurtling along the middle of the road towards them.