All the colours of the playground dad rainbow

Today the sky was so absolutely blue that it looked like it could have been a painted ceiling 15 metres away from my face. I watched across the children’s playground with the sun behind me and not a single feature to break up the ultramarine. No clouds, birds, planes or other airborne objects disrupted the pure relentless blue.


Below, in the park it was every colour of Sydney dad.


There was the guy with 1 earbud in trying to watch the footy on his phone. He crisscrossed the equipment trailing his little girl from one perceived danger to the next. At one point he became engrossed in the action on his tiny screen as his daughter got high on the spiderweb. He did offer a distracted “be careful” in her direction, however by that point she was already down and running slowly across the softfall ground.


There was a business looking dad who seemed dressed down in jeans, a button up shirt and sweater combo - worn casual with adidas kicks. He and his dressed down wife, watched their dressed down daughter play for a bit before checking a lot of emails on the bench.


There was a very involved dad dragging his less than 1 year old down the slide then pushing him back up the ladder while commentating the whole loop. The boy and the big boy had similar amounts of hair, no shoes and T-shirts wrapped tightly around their big proud tums. Both smiled a lot.


There was a dad who rolled into the playground behind his primary school aged kids wearing thongs, holding a half finished beer and escorting a fluffy dog off it’s lead. The other dads all looked in his direction for a while.


There was a dad who spent a lot of the playground time on a video call which begun with “thanks very much for taking the time to talk, I’m in a playground with the kids.” I wondered if it was a prospective business relationship or a formal call with the grandparents.


There was also the dad half looking at their child and half gazing at the incredible sky.


All the colours of the playground dad rainbow, under a completely uniform sky. Happy Father’s Day.