The City Slider visited Canberra for one day only in December 2015. Photo: Belco60, Facebook.
If it’s all too hard to bring Big Splash back, what about an even bigger splash? It’s the question at least one Canberran is asking.
This December marks exactly 10 years since ‘The City Slider’ came to Canberra – a giant 325-metre-long, 6-metre-wide inflatable water slide.
For those who don’t remember, it was rolled out along two lanes of Belconnen’s Cohen Street on 5 December 2025, and thousands of locals turned out for it.
It was a scorcher. Photo: Belco60, Facebook.
Justin Bush was among them.
“It was all over the media back at the time, and it was primarily driven by Facebook,” he recalls.
“My lifelong best friend, another colleague, and I were like, ‘Oh, we should all go.’ We thought it’d be un-Belconnen of us not to go.”
The slide was part of a national tour that had already visited Ipswich, Redlands, Brisbane, Rockhampton, Cairns, Wollongong, Gosford and Sydney’s Hills Shire.
Organisers promised a “soft landing” with a 35 mm foam layer beneath the slide, while little kids could enjoy a free 25-metre “mini slider” designed to be safe and slower than the main attraction.
Ticketed sessions ran in 90-minute blocks from 9 am to 8:30 pm, with pre-purchased tickets keeping crowds manageable.
The day it came to Canberra was a scorcher – for better and for worse.
“The day was like 34 degrees – typical Canberra summer – and the fact it was on asphalt made it so much hotter,” Bush says.
Some found there wasn’t enough water flowing along the slides. Photo: Belco60, Facebook.
The crowds meant Bush and his friends had to park at Westfield Belconnen and embark on what “felt like the longest walk of that street ever”.
“There were people everywhere. Businesses at the bottom were doing a roaring trade.”
But it was worth it.
“Seeing it was just something else – like nothing we’d ever seen here in Canberra before.”
Once staff marshalled the queue, delivered a safety briefing, and checked participants for electronic devices or sharp items, they handed each slider an inflatable yellow tube to go down on.
“They had little yellow tubes to slide on, a bit of soapy stuff to speed things up, and people at intersections of the slide respraying water because it was so hot it kept drying out,” Bush says.
“It was fun, but you really had to self-propel a bit. Maybe that’s why it never came back – it took about four or five minutes to get to the bottom.”
Water pressure issues aside, Bush says the general Canberra-wide consensus was extremely favourable. Enough that he reckons a return is well overdue.
The yellow rings you were given to slide down on. Photo: Belco60, Facebook.
“We’ve been talking about it again at work because of the lack of a proper ACT pool policy, and Big Splash – I’m very passionate about Big Splash. I always say we need more things like this, especially being a Dad. I’d be thrilled to see it come back.”
However, the fate of the City Slider remains a bit of a mystery.
It appeared to vanish shortly after its Canberra run. Its Facebook page’s last post, dated January 2016, celebrated a visit to Bendigo, and the company’s website has been inactive since 2019.
One haunting Facebook post, dated December 2015, reads, “Thanks, Canberra. You were amazing!”
Perhaps it’s time for the owners of Big Splash to order a 325-metre inflatable water slide?
