The basketball hoop was installed by resident Stephen Goodwin in 2018. Photo: Thomas Emerson.
When Stephen Goodwin was growing up, the streets were full of kids kicking balls, riding bikes and shooting hoops. Not anymore.
“I don’t see kids playing in the streets anymore,” the O’Connor resident says.
“I would like to be able to bring that back, and this is something that can be done at no cost to the government.”
Goodwin, a former PE teacher and education policy adviser, has become a familiar name inside sections of the ACT Government since 2018, when he spent his own money to install a basketball hoop on a patch of nature strip at the end of his quiet cul-de-sac on Finn Street.
He got the idea after seeing a neighbour’s small backboard set up awkwardly on the verge.
“It was situated in such a fashion I was worried kids using it were going to land on the curb and break their ankles,” he says.
“I thought, ‘we could do better than that’, so I had this idea to make our very quiet cul-de-sac into a sort of activity area for the local kids.”
It worked. The hoop is a hoot.
“It’s very popular,” Goodwin says. “I even had one guy a couple of months ago who’d driven from Lyneham specifically to use it. He was just over the moon at having access to a hoop.”
Unlike kids who play soccer, football or cricket, Goodwin argues basketball players often struggle to find free, casual places to practise.
“If you play a grass-based sport … you can walk around the corner to one of Canberra’s thousands of ovals and practise your sport whenever you want, and you can do it for free,” he says.
“People who play things like basketball – we can’t do that. With more and more schools being locked up, and limited access to indoor basketball facilities, there really is a crying need for this sort of infrastructure, especially in these older suburbs.”
Thomas Emerson with Stephen Goodwin and neighbour Zsi Soboslay. Photo: Thomas Emerson.
But earlier this year, the driver of a rubbish truck complained about having to maneuver around the structure.
Compliance officers arrived soon after and Goodwin was handed a notice ordering him to remove it. He’s since been fined $220 for taking away the hoop but leaving the concrete slab behind.
“It’s a bit ironic, because now the backboard’s down, we park our cars out there on the road and they’re even more of a barrier to the trucks than the backboard ever was,” he says.
Undaunted, Goodwin has now teamed up with independent MLA Thomas Emerson to push for Finn Street to become Canberra’s first formally designated “active street”.
This proposal calls for the government to not only grant an exemption allowing the hoop to return, but also to install clear signage designating the cul-de-sac as a 10-20 km/h shared zone with pedestrian priority, and to permit simple painted markings for a basketball key and handball courts.
“Cars obviously still [would be] fully able to use the road. It’s not about reducing access,” Goodwin adds.
All this would be paid for through a North Canberra Community Council grant and, ideally, evaluated by a research body such as the University of Canberra, using “wellbeing indicators” from the government’s Wellbeing Framework.
He hopes it could also ease modern parental fears about letting kids play outside.
“How many kids do you see playing on the street these days? None. And that’s all about parents’ fears. What I want to do is create that safe space … like they have around shopping centres, where pedestrians and cars share the road and cars know that pedestrians have right of way.”
Should it stay, or should it go? Photo: Thomas Emerson.
Emerson has already written to City Services Minister Tara Cheyne, urging the government to keep the hoop and support the pilot.
“Giving residents greater ownership over their shared public spaces is a powerful way to drive community connection and belonging,” he says.
“So many of us don’t know our neighbours. We need more initiatives like this to help us reconnect … and foster healthy communities.
“The ACT Government should be applauding and facilitating these kinds of low-cost, community-led solutions.”
He believes a successful trial in O’Connor could serve as a model for other suburbs.
“It’d be fantastic to see more kids playing on Canberra’s streets.”
The proposal already has the backing of the North Canberra Community Council and Basketball ACT, so Goodwin says all it’s waiting on is the government.
“Just work with us rather than trying to enforce a rule which is not always in the best interests of the community.”
