Baulkham Hills South

If you wander past Balcombe Heights Estate Masonic Oval at 8am you’ll catch us supervising a minor league of humans and hounds: kids on the playground, someone manning a BBQ like it’s the weekend Olympics, dogs exploiting the off‑leash area with Olympic-level enthusiasm. For years that reserve has been our backyard — playgrounds, sports fields, walking paths, toilets and picnic tables all pitched in like a suburban village green. A shiny skate park even opened there in April 2019, if you like remembering things in dates.

We used to organise our chaos around the playgroup listings on ParraParents — the Baulkham Hills Hillsong Playgroup (Baulkham Hills Hillsong Church, 1–5 Solent Rd) and Baulkham Hills St Michaels Playgroup were both on the docket. As ParraParents noted, playgroups are the social glue for the under‑5 set, which is handy because we apparently never learned to make small talk without someone else’s bub in our arms.

There’s no rush here to be anything other than practical. If you hate the smell of grilled sausages at 10am, the sound of scooters on the footpath, or the sight of toddlers claiming picnic tables as sovereign territory, this will not be your jam. Equally, if you love a reserve that does everything — sport, park, picnic, dog run — and you enjoy scheduling your life around playgroup times, we’ll save you a spot by the BBQ.

Back in the day, Baulkham Hills South was the place you measured by how many playgroups you could attend before lunch. We’re not ashamed of that.