We have heard over the years rumours, innuendos and furtive stories about our beloved Luna Park and its history. Like the author, Helen Pitt, many visitors remember childhood or adolescent trips to the iconic amusement Park, nestled by the harbour, next to the Northern pylon of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The giddiness, the squealing and the flipping upside-down are embedded in our collective joys and fears. The euphemisms, but not the messy realities have changed over the years and in this stirring book, recounts the thrilling history of the park. A lot of Luna Parker’s remember regurgitating their lunch and throwing up against the Rotator’s walls. Today a spill is dealt with as a “protein spill” and dealt withswiftly by the attendants.
Luna Park is Sydney’s harbourside’s golden pocket of fun, frivolity and mishaps, has a luminous and checkered history since opening in 1935 on land that housed building materials for the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Three hectares of land sit behind the facade of the clown face’s maw that is prime waterfront real estate frontage.
Pitt begins her story through the awestruck eyes of riders aboard the world’s first Ferris wheel at the Chicago Fair of 1893, an enormous machine that could carry over 200 vertiginous passengers over 80 metres to the top. She tells of the demolition and re-assembly of the ride, a failed, Depression-era Glenelg attraction that was shipped, numbered and ready, from South Australia.
The 1935 Luna Park, the first of several incarnations was reassembled in just 12 weeks by out-of-work Harbour Bridge riggers, in the shadow of the arched behemoth they’d risked their lives building.
Yes, Luna Park is just for fun, but there are so many stories, inspiring, hilarious, and tragic in its history, that it would be too easy to lazily highlight only “the good bits” of this fascinating story.
Pitt writes with a contagious enthusiasm, and her meticulous research beginning with her eighth birthday party adventure in the River Caves, unearths wonderful anecdotes and tantalising trivia. But accidents do happen at amusement parks, with that creeping sensation that something awful might happen, is exactly what makes scary rides addictive. What would be the point, writes Helen, of going to Luna Park if you couldn’t poke your terrified kid brother in the ribs at the point-of-no-return gate of the Big Dipper, daring him to get on board.
If there is a dark side to this fun park, it is the story of money, power, and at worst, lives needlessly lost. The horrible and creepy 1979 fire which killed six kids and the father of one of them on the Ghost Train ride was a defining moment in the history of the park, the city, the administration of justice in NSW. crooked cops, a callous act of arson, with witnesses who were never called to appear before the inquest. The euphemisms, but not the messy reality, have changed over the years, all revealed, messy and all, in Helen Pitt’s marvellous history of the park.
Luna Park (the name has become generic) was immensely popular with plenty of entrepreneurs willing to gamble on success. unsurprisingly, she has many stories to tell and she tells them well. Luna Park in Sydney still draws young and old to its old world charm living up to its catchcry”just for fun”.
