The story behind Sydney’s Luna Park and its impact on the city

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The Luna Park that sits on the edge of Sydney Harbour wasn't the first Luna Park in Australia.

Melbourne had a Luna Park that's a few decades older, and there were Luna Parks in Adelaide and Perth and Brisbane.

But the one on Glenel Beach in Adelaide went broke, so it was dismantled, packed up, and then sent to Sydney.

Where it was reassembled largely by workers who had just finished working on the colossal Harbour bridge right next to it.

Helen Pitt is back on conversations today.

Last time Helen was here she was talking about her prize-winning book on the Sydney Opera House,

and now Helen's written the history of that gargoyle that grins across the water at the House of High Culture.

Luna Parks' famous slogan was, and is, just for fun.

I should say I went there as a kid, as a 12-year-old.

I remember that as one of the happiest nights of my young life,

I was so excited by the lights, the rides, the junk food, the noise, the colour, the sense of freedom.

I thought my head would explode.

The Luna Park was more than just a place for kids.

It was also a pleasure for us for young lovers too.

Millions of people have similar happy memories of Luna Park,

of walking through the teeth of that gigantic grinning face at the entrance of screaming as they go down the Big Dipper,

and dodging the unfortunate anti-gravity emissions of people on the spinning rotor.

At the tail of Luna Park is also bound up with con men and crooked cops and developers who have long wanted to snatch up that prime piece of waterfront real estate.

And then there's the horror of the ghost train fire of 1979,

which took the lives of seven people, six of them children.

The botched investigation that followed was a terrible stain on the city's history.

Luna Park was shut at few years, but it was rebuilt, renovated, replasted and repainted,

and it's recovered its original glory, and it remains to this day a deeply romantic place.

Helen Pittsburgh is called Luna Park, the extraordinary story of the showmen,

shysters and schemers who built Sydney's famous fun park.

Hello, Helen.

Hello, Richard.

I have those happy memories, like I said, of going there on a Friday night.

To me, looking back, I think it's my idea of what paradise was like.

I think it's all then, you know, when people imagine heaven, they've got people in robes, it's peaceful.

They're on a cloud somewhere.

No, no, no, heaven's exciting.

Heaven's a bit dangerous.

Heaven has a sense of freedom about it, and you can eat all the junk food you like.

Do you have similar memories of going there as a kid?

Absolutely.

My eighth birthday, like you always, when you were 12, was the happiest day of my life.

At that short point in my place on the planet.

And I think you're right, the moment you just walk through that mouth,

it's like a transformation into another world.

It's our equivalent of Marcel Prousts, you know, touching that, eating the metal,

and instantly going back to childhood.

And I don't think that matters what age you are.

Like you walk through it as an adult, and you can immediately feel what it was like

to be a little kid in that sense of wonder and awe.

They always used to say it's the place where adults can become kids again,

and kids can lose their adults.

And you just do go into this alternative universe of fun, but also fear.

And just a taste of independence was really what it was all about for all of us

that went as young children, I think, as kids.

And then again, it was a ride of passage, as Tina, just quite often,

the first place many of us went without our parents, because it was bus train ride to circular key

and an amazing ferry ride across the harbour.

And as artist Martin Sharp always used to say, it's part of the triumvirate of Sydney, really.

You know, you've got Sydney Opera House, Sydney Harbour Bridge, and Luna Park.

And really, when you take that ferry and arrive that way, it's Sydney Honestick.

You know, it's got the views, it's got absolutely everything you could possibly want.

Sydney Honest, Cupid Olsdick, in fact, because that's where the summer of the 17th doll was filmed in 1958.

Yes, but Ernest Borgnein in it, all people.

And Angela Lansbury, and just the most extraordinary backdrop.

The first time Sydney really starred in a Hollywood film.

The first film made with foreign money from America.

So it was recognizable as one of the most startling spots in the harbour.

The gold tooth and the mouth of the harbour, the Sydney Morning Eld used to call it,

because it was a gold mine.

But it's sort of now considered a bit more the low brow face of the harbour,

as opposed to the high brow face of the Sydney Opera House that it looks out at.

I've got all these sense memories from that night of, like, I think it wasn't being in the char char

and it was in over the harbour, or maybe it was the wild match or something.

And char char did, while the still does.

And the zipper, which turned you completely upside down.

You know, obviously over the generations, the rides have changed.

In fact, the rotor is currently on the right hand side when you walk through.

When I was a kid, it was on the left hand side.

And it was always the place where more people lost their lunch than any other part of the park.

I see only if it went on the rotor.

Because the other kids were saying,

don't go on the radar, because people spew.

And it hangs in midair and then splashes on to you.

Is that true?

Yes. And in fact, we're not allowed to call it vomit at the park.

We call it a protein spill, because it happens so regularly.

We do not like to embarrass the patrons who do lose their lunch.

So they quickly change your clothes, launder them.

And it's as if nothing has ever happened.

Really?

Yes.

Proteins, but does they like protein spill on the rotor?

Yes.

That's exactly how it happens.

And it's very well efficiently handled today as it was back then too.

When you were going through there at the age of eight with your dad,

what was your dad like on that trip?

My dad completely lit up.

So it turns out, I didn't know when I was writing this book.

I was just writing a book about another Sydney harbor icon across the bridge from the opera house.

That my dad had gone as a nine-year-old with his elder brother, Fred.

He was 20 years younger than his elder brother.

And Uncle Fred, I always knew had worked on the Big Dipper,

but I didn't know he'd actually built it.

So this was an extraordinary story I found from my cousin.

So he was one of the unemployed workers in depression era Sydney,

who lined up at the front to get work.

So he was a mechanic, he ended up working on the Big Dipper testing it.

And so he really wanted to take his younger brother to test it out as a nine-year-old.

And dad, even when he took me as an eight-year-old,

just lit up at the face of all my friends running on to go on the turkey trot

and the joy wheel and the barrels of fun.

But we were all a bit frightened to go down the slide.

So he induced us by walking up the stairs with us

and getting the Hessian sack out and pushing us off.

And then you couldn't stop us.

We even gained the Devil's Drop, which is an even steeper slide.

And just when I think back then,

that sensation of the wind flying through your hair

then the absolute freedom you just can't help but laugh.

I mean, Coney Island today is still a time capsule of how it was in 1935

when the park opened.

So is this real walk down memory lane to your own childhood

and many, many generations of others?

Now to find the origins of the urban amusement park,

you go all the way back to the 1893 World Expo in New York.

World Expo in Chicago, where Chicago's response to the Eiffel Tower

was to build a gigantic ferris wheel.

What kind of an impact did this prototype amusement park make?

Chicago's World Fair changed the face of the,

or created the blueprint for the modern day amusement park.

As you said, the idea was to out-ifle Eiffel

and his impermanent Eiffel Tower.

So they built this giant ferris wheel that was the centerpiece

of the world's Colombian fair in 1893.

Now, it laid the groundwork in many ways.

It created this thing called the Midway Plasons.

It was Chicago's big attempt to show the rest of the world

of how big an important city it was.

So the Midway is a term used in every amusement park now.

It's that center line that goes through all amusement parks.

Like an Esplanade.

An Esplanade of usually asphalt and fun, sometimes a little bit of vomit.

But certainly wherever you find an amusement park,

the workers that will call it Midway.

And so that was what began the whole amusement park movement.

Now, 1893, there's this group of people

that come to start rides and start entertainment.

And one of them happened to be a young architect

by the name of Fred Thompson,

who gave up his promising career as an architectural draftsman

and an inventor to become the janitor at a ride on the Midway.

And from that, he learned absolutely everything you needed

to know about going to fair.

So he took rides to the Buffalo World's Fair.

He took them all over the country.

And in doing so, he met another entrepreneur

who was perhaps more of a business mind by the name of Elma Skip Dundee.

Skipio was his middle name.

And together, they teamed to start a whole load of different rides

that appeared in loads of different fares at this stage.

So the pages of Jules Verne's 1865 novel

from the Earth to the Moon may have inspired modern day moon missions,

but they also inspired this young guy called Fred Thompson.

And it's important to remember it that time,

at the turn of the century,

everyone was captured by this idea of traveling to space.

So he created this ride called A Trip to the Moon.

And in 1901, the Buffalo World's Fair there.

And what would people experience when they went on this ride?

Well, it was pretty rudimentary, but it was like a kayak

or a wooden vessel that flew up into the sky

and you could look out the port hole

and see sights of America like Niagara Falls

that you were flying and then suddenly you looked out

and you were into outer space.

And the idea is when you arrived, you stepped out

and you were served green cheese,

according to the prevailing myth at the time that the moon was made

of green cheese.

And it was served by dwarves that the two of them had met

at the Chicago World's Fair again,

exactly kind of a bit like the Wizard of Oz,

who boom, who wrote the Wizard of Oz,

had actually attended Chicago's World Fair.

So the World Fair changed America in so many ways

from it's it invented chewing gum and invented the escalator

and it invented the modern day amusement park.

So Fred Thompson and his partner, Skip Lundy,

then built the first lunar park in New York

on Long Island, Coney Islands,

just on the southern part of Long Island in New York.

How did they arrive at the name lunar park?

Because it's not quite what I thought it was going to be.

Because I just assumed it was here with the moon and lunar sea

and lunar ticks and all that.

And this is the place where you go crazy.

That's not quite the origin though, is it?

It's a surprise, like you would think, wouldn't you?

Given this ride is called a trip to the moon,

the airships called lunar, that that would be, indeed,

why they called their permanent park, lunar park.

What happened was they were enticed to New York

by a guy called George Tillio who'd ridden the...

With Ferris Wheel in Chicago and said,

I want this and I want a ride like a trip to the moon

that he'd seen at Buffalo's World Fair.

So he enticed them down in 1902 and that first season

they did very well on that ride, a trip to the moon,

but they wanted their own park,

because they didn't want to give the profits to Tillio,

who was the one who invented the very first face entry.

Steeple Chase Funny Faces, that motto for that park

and his face was above the entry spot.

So Dundee and Thompson started their own amusement park next door,

Lunar Park, not named for the airship, not named for their ride.

But Skip's youngest sister was called Lunar Dundee

and she was a World Champion West player

who lived not very far away.

At 37, not very well known to the rest of the world,

but everyone assumed that it was named for the moon,

but no, it was for his younger sister.

And you find that in his hero bit tree

that was written sadly only three years after the park opened

because she died at 40.

So the first Lunar Park established and was traded

by a couple of American entrepreneurs in Melbourne.

That's the same Lunar Park that's still there today

in St. Kilda Beach.

It's amazing, it is, yes.

And it's not really had much closure other than

it closed in World War I.

So in 1913, the chief engineer of Melbourne's Lunar Park,

T.H. Eslick moved to Sydney to set up a flashy amusement park,

not on the harbor, but well close to the harbor,

in Sydney's Rush Cutters Bay, right next to King's Cross,

that he called White City after the Chicago Expo.

Last three years, then what happened to this amusement park, White City?

Well, like many amusement parks all over the world,

it was destroyed by a terrible storm,

and which ended up becoming a five.

But T.H. Eslick was quite the character

he had been involved in the creation of Lunar Park's

all over Europe.

And White City also was another popular name.

There were White City's all over the world.

And this one, in particular, he'd chosen to be around Rush Cutters Bay

in Paddington, and he actually ran for the local seat of Paddington

as a politician didn't win the seat.

So he had great political ambitions.

So I think you'd probably call him a businessman

along the lines of Christopher Skase these days,

in that he would start up these schemes,

and then they would fail.

And then he wouldn't be able to return to the place that he came

because he had a health issue that would prevent him from returning

to Brisbane.

He's in the wheelchair, the oxygen mask, all of that.

He had osteoarthritis, and he could fly to America,

but he couldn't fly back to Brisbane where he had creditors.

So he skipped town, did he?

Skip town.

Is that White City a amusement park?

The same White City tenor centre?

It is, yes, it's where the name comes from.

And that ticket's the same from the White City of Chicago,

the White City amusement park in Chicago.

And interestingly, there was a White City also in Perth.

So there was a White City in Sydney and a White City in Perth.

And it was shut down the one in Perth because the snake charmer,

Cleopatra, got bitten by one of her venomous vapors and died.

Just like Cleopatra.

Snake charmers.

And then there was boxing and illegal gambling

which actually shut the one in Perth.

Then, in 1935, Adelaide got its own Lunar Park Act,

Bernal Beach.

Lovely beach.

You could just get on the tram at Victoria Square,

in the middle of Adelaide, takes you right there,

seemed to have everything going for it.

Why didn't Lunar Park succeed in Adelaide?

Well, the depression bit into its profits.

They, owners, asked for a rent reduction from Glenelg town council

they were denied that.

But then also, they asked for permission to open on Sundays.

Now, there were strict laws preventing South Australia

and businesses trading on a Sunday.

In general on Adelaide in those days,

there was a bit of a no-ref sign hanging on the sea limits too,

as well.

Wasn't there with that issue?

They did not like the characters that came there.

That was definitely questionable characters that hung out there.

So that is one of the reasons White felt.

They packed it all up in 1934, put it to auction,

but there were no buyers.

So the Phillips brothers decided,

okay, what are we going to do?

In conjunction with David Atkins and a young Tasmanian engineer

that had started the same week that the park opened,

called Ted Hopkins.

They took careful plans and dismantled everything

and put it all in a steam ship.

1300 tons of fun.

All the rides, like the Big Dipper.

The Big Dipper was there in Adelaide.

The Noah's Ark, a whole load of rides

that were a part of that very first lunar part.

Right, dismantled and put onto a steam ship.

He used five pieces, bolt by bolt,

put together very careful pictures were made

for their reassembly when they came to Sydney,

and they packed it up.

And what happened was the Phillips brothers said,

well, we better find somewhere else.

Why don't we go to Sin City Sydney?

David, you've been working in Kudji.

Could you find us preferably a beachside suburb

that would be at the end of a tram or train line

that we could set up?

Now, because of the failure of white city,

and there was another amusement park

in Wavley Council area at Tamarama,

called Wonderland City,

that was only briefly there,

but it absolutely irked the locals,

particularly the Tamarama Surf Life Saving Club,

because it took up prized beachfront area,

only left four metres of the beach.

And it's main ride,

the Ayrham's Scarem kept breaking down.

So there was a lot of resistance

in the beachside suburbs for an amusement park

in the eastern suburbs of Sydney.

So they, he chased all around Sydney

and found this five-acre lot

on the former warehouses, the site ware.

As you said, the harbour bridge was put together

of the workshops.

It was completely dismantled,

it was just a set of like weeds and old bricks.

And so the Phillips brothers signed a lease of agreement

with the Department of Main Road

to own the land at that time.

And Bob's your uncle.

So this was this incredibly lucky confluence

of circumstances.

One, there was the Great Depression,

which meant that there wasn't the kind of insane real estate demand.

Then there was the fact that there were all those sheds

they had built for the workers on the harbour bridge.

So my god, they got this incredible waterfront site,

which is probably worth more than quite a lot of nations.

Absolutely.

You can imagine, can't you?

It was not paying its way the harbour bridge.

So they needed to find ways to get people

to come to the north side,

because everyone was going to the city.

So the local North Sydney Council

and New South Wales government teamed together

to do these twin projects,

the North Sydney Olympic pool,

and the amusement park.

So they were both begun in 1935.

It's the giant face that now stands

or has traditionally stood at the entrance of Sydney's lunar park.

Was that an Adelaide and brought over?

Or did they make one fresh?

No, they made a brand new one.

There was no face in Adelaide.

There was only the face in Melbourne.

It was quite a sinister looking Mr Moon.

And this was also a very sinister looking,

the first one,

made by Rupert Brown,

the first arsenic artist in Melbourne.

He was brought up to Sydney.

And it didn't last very long,

because it was paper mache and canvas and horse hair

and all sorts of things.

It was slapped together very quickly.

So once they moved all the rides

and unloaded them at that very same roof

that had been the place where all the activity had taken place

for the Harbour Bridge,

all the workers came

and depressionier aligned up.

And you know, it's quite remarkable

that given it's one of the three icons of Sydney,

the Harbour Bridge was built in eight years.

The Sydney Opera House was built in 16 years.

This took three months,

12 weeks of non-stop work.

And there you go.

It's remained squishing by the ocean now.

It's quite rare to believe.

So on October 4th, 1935,

someone threw the switch

and all the 900 million lights

of Luna Park went on.

Was it an instant hit, Luna Park?

Instant hit, yes.

People were there that night.

And then all the local kids

were let in for free the next day.

And I interviewed one of them,

Patty Harbour,

bless her, who died the same month

that Luna Park celebrated its 90th.

But again, like us both,

it was a standout memory of her childhood.

She could, she just loved every minute of it.

What did she remember often?

Oh, she could remember the rides

running through with her brother holding his hand,

given the tickets,

and just the sheer joy.

Because this is a kid of the depression

she'd never had anything like it.

And she also particularly remembered

the box of aeroplane jelly

she got given as a freebie.

It never made it home.

It was meant to go home to the families.

But you know, she slipped her finger

and stuck it into the jelly crystals

and ate it well before it got home.

So this is so interesting.

Every time I talk to someone

that went to Luna Park as a child,

they always have these beautiful memories

that just put a smile on their face.

She remembered going on that ride,

the River Caves.

Was that like a kind of a tunnel of love?

Type ride?

It was.

And in fact, Martin Sharp,

the artist again,

used to say, you know,

the big tip is a bit like an extension

of the Harbour Bridge.

The River Caves was like an extension

of the ferry that you take to get to

Luna Park.

And you went through these nine dioramas,

nine different worlds.

There was Tarzan and Jane.

There was an Eskimos,

there were Eskimos,

there were Aborigines.

There was a Japanese tea house.

There were all different worlds.

And at that time,

this, the River Caves came from Adelaide.

It was packed up and brought from Adelaide.

So it was very much like the great museums

in New York,

the dioramas that took people around the world

when before World Travel,

International Travel was possible.

So they really took people to other places

and not to mention the Big Dipper,

which was just a thrill right on the edge of Sydney Harbour.

Were there complaints from the good folk

of North Sydney about all the roof raft

coming into Luna Park after it opened?

There were before it opened.

But very cleverly,

Ted Hopkins,

who was a very fine photographer,

the friend of the local reverend,

Reverend Frank Cashew,

was also a very good photographer,

who'd taken photos daily

of the Harbour Bridge being built.

And so he threw a lot of money at the church fate

and funnily enough,

the churches did not complain.

Although at the beginning before they came,

the local Anglican minister thought

there would be orgies every night.

But that kind of did end up happening in World War II

when they ended up being a bit of a dark side to Luna Park

when a lot of soldiers went there

and prostitutes gathered under the pylons of the Harbour Bridge.

But, you know, it was an instant success.

And that's largely because kids of all ages went there constantly.

Ted Hopkins, you mentioned there.

One of the founding fathers of Luna Park

became a local identity.

What kind of a man was this Ted Hopkins?

I think he was a pretty happy old soul.

In fact, they say that the Arthur Barton face

that's there currently was based on Old King Cole,

but that it's kind of Ted Hopkins face.

He was a ruddy complexioned white-haired man.

They called the white cloud.

And between he and DA, they were David Atkins.

They weren't known as the Laurel and Hardy team.

So they were the driving force behind the park.

His theory was that every kid that comes

should not leave empty handed.

So he always made sure that there were toys kids could take home

and that they had a great,

they left with a big smile on their faces.

And that way they would just beg their parents

to take them back each time.

So he was known so much as such an identity.

He's known as Mr. Luna Park.

And in fact, his ashes are scattered

beside the the wall for Pondin,

which he unloaded the rides.

How did Sydney's Luna Park change once World War II arrived?

And we got into the war in the Pacific.

And we have a whole lot of American servicemen coming to Australia.

How did that change things?

Yeah, well, it did become very much an adult playground.

You know, there was the Fred Switely band that was a swing band.

They used the Palais dance floor,

which was the old pontoon that had been used for the fairies.

And it was a really popular place that many soldiers

and sailors spent their final night

at before going to a theatre of war.

So it really changed from being a childhood pleasure palace

to an adult and young person place.

And very popular.

Even through the wartime, that was the case.

Even in the 60s, you know, they had go-go dances

that came to Kourne Island.

So it was quite often an adult theme park,

as well as as one for children.

What happened the night when those Japanese subs came?

It midget subs came into Sydney Harbour and started firing off torpedoes.

Yes, well, fascinating.

Amazingly, Luna Park remained open during World War II.

It was going to be requisitioned by the army.

But then Ted Hopkins said he could see that the government could see

there was a very valid point of giving people an escape

from their wartime woes.

So it remained it was browned out,

but then they escaped when they heard about the Japanese subs

into a little air raid shelter

that had been a remnant of the dormant long site

when it was the place that the Harbour bridge had been built.

It was the place where all the explosives were kept

as little dug out hole in the sandstone.

At Millson's point, it's still there today.

And everyone who was working that night took refuge

and hid from the Japanese subs.

The last remaining founder of Luna Park,

Ted Hopkins, that we talked about a bit earlier,

said this lovely thing in 1960.

He said, if you could bottle the scent of childhood,

it would be the vanilla essence in the waffles sold at Luna Park.

The food at Luna Park.

I remember that being a big thing for me.

None of it was good for me.

All of it was bad for me at the time.

But man, it's delicious to a kid, isn't it?

Oh, can't you just taste it?

The dag with dogs and the smell of the popcorn

and the fairy floss, which he always insisted

had to be made in front of you.

None of this stuff from a bag.

And hot dogs were actually invented in Coney Island.

You know, they say Coney Island and hot dogs go together

since hot dog first met bun.

It's been part of the joy is the junk food.

To be honest, because again, you've got the freedom to choose

what you want to eat.

That's right.

You're not at home, you are going to eat all that rubbishy food

and have a marvelous time with it.

So Ted really understood that.

So smells are as important a part of childhood

and those rides as the feeling and the sensation you get

when you're on the ride.

And the theater of whipping up the fairy floss, too.

Not in a bag.

It had to be done in front of you.

Absolutely.

And most of the nights that Luna Park was open,

it was a bigger staff at night than there was in the daytime.

It was a daytime when maintenance people.

It also shut during the winter.

So it was only a summer thing from September, October to May.

So it was quite a sunny, happy time.

And it pleasant evenings to be out there.

So it was all part of the theater of the park.

After the war, Prince Philip came to visit.

Sydney and had a visit to Luna Park.

How did he get on in Luna Park?

Well, he had a ball in the barrel of fun.

He fell over and he actually made the front page of the Daily Telegraph.

But he also went for a ride on the river caves and stood up

and was escorted off the ride.

But he was only Prince Philip of Greece at that time.

So he wasn't particularly well known as the wife of the Queen Elizabeth II.

But it was the sort of place that people wanted to go to

when Alfred Hitchcock visited Sydney.

He wanted to Luna Park.

When famous people came, they'd heard about it

because it was a very American style.

Particularly people from America came.

That's why it was so popular with servicemen because they saw,

oh, there's a Coney Island here.

Well, we must go to that too.

By the 1960s, Luna Park was getting a little bit quaint,

which might be the death knell funnily enough for an amusement park.

So it brought in a new ride called the Wild Mouse in 1963.

How was that different from the Big Dipper?

Well, it was modeled on one that Ted Hopkins had seen overseas.

And he always just got the idea, got the patient for it.

And would make it himself when he got home, got the ideas,

got the plans and put it together from the German plan.

So it was terribly scary.

And it still is terribly scary if you ask me the Wild Mouse,

because it goes out over the harbor.

And it's similar to the Big Dipper,

but just slightly more contained in it.

There's a little, little cars.

So the thing is he would see, he would travel all through the winter months

in the summer season in the Northern Hemisphere and bring back great rights.

That's how the Rocha came back.

He came back from Germany.

He was always trying to find inventive ways to bring new things to Sydney.

And that was the appeal,

because it was like cutting edge technology in that time.

But you're right, it was starting to get slightly run down by the late 60s.

By 1970, it was getting a bit longer than the tooth.

And there was talk, there was talk about shuttering in the park

and replacing it with the world trade centers.

Well, indeed.

Absolutely.

So the lease was being operated by Hopkins.

And he did not take up the lease renewal.

So Nathan, Spat and Leon Fink took up that.

And the first thing that they wanted to do was put in a world trade,

a $50 million world trade center that Harry Sider did the plans for.

The Askin government knocked it back remarkably.

And then it wasn't the last time that there was attempted, though.

It was also, again, many years later when Barry Unsworth was premier

that they wanted to make it an adult theme park again, high rise.

And there was talk at one point that Club Med might be involved in that too.

So this has been prized harbicide real estate.

So it is remarkable that it hasn't had any high rise on it.

It remained.

But by the late 60s, early 70s,

it was getting a bit longer in the tooth, that is for sure.

And the lease was only on a week to week contract.

So Leon Fink invited in some artists like Martin Sharp,

Peter Kingston, Gary Sherd, Richard Liny,

pop artists that did a new face to match the times, the 1970s,

and painted it in different colours and so forth.

But it was starting to get slightly run down by this stage.

What affected working on Lunapark have on the young Martin Sharp,

who was becoming a world famous artist at the time,

creating posters and covers of Osmegasine and the like.

What affected it have on him?

I think it would be fair to say he was quite obsessed with it.

He invited his friend, Tiny Tim,

to break the world singing record at Lunapark in 1979,

which in fact he did.

I think he loved how it transported you to childhood.

He always felt that it was a microcosm of Sydney.

And he just loved it, like nothing else.

And he convinced his friend, Peter Kingston,

who by this stage had bought a house next door to the park,

to become involved with maintaining it.

And I think he kind of never let go of his obsession with it

all through his days.

Then on the 25th of July, 1974, Helen,

Sydney Ciders woke up to be told on the paper

that six of the giant faces teeth were missing.

This was a great scandal and a mystery at the time.

Newspapers said the theft was obviously the work of professionals.

You've got the scoop here, Helen.

What the hell happened to those missing teeth?

Well, it was actually quite common for them to be blacked out for muck-up days,

so back in the 70s and 80s.

But these were actually teeth taken from the face.

And it turns out that they were University of New South Wales,

pranksters that were part of the Uni scavenger hunt

that came down there one night, thought they only,

part of the list was you had to get a condom machine

from Sydney Uni, a tooth from Luna Park.

They not only got one, they got 60.

Through them in the field is bred getaway truck

and raced back to Kensington,

jumping over the median strip to avoid paying the toll and the harbour bridge.

And when they got back...

Why did they say they went over the median strip on the harbour bridge?

It was like a complete getaway vehicle.

Now, I cannot reveal the name of these people

because to this day, they do not want to be known.

And they...

Really?

You know, did they loot on the green at the University of New South Wales?

The poor old student union that was actually the one overseeing the scavenger hunt

then has to reveal the fact that they are the ones in possession

of these teeth when it's on the front pages of the newspapers

and leading the TV bulletins.

And one of the guys whose mother came to visit him from Lungong,

she comes and sits on the bed and goes,

did you hear that they've stolen Luna Park's teeth

and goes, Mum, you're sitting on one of them, it's under my bed.

So, he had to...

He had to fess up, although the poor old union were the ones that returned it.

The actual culprits ended up becoming some of the best medicals in New South Wales.

Not only doctors, but dentists,

and it was perhaps the first and last tooth extraction they ever performed for free.

Fantastic.

They won't reveal their identities even now.

Not even nearly over 50 years ago.

Are they still proud of themselves for having guns?

Yes, they wouldn't have told me otherwise.

Right, maybe they reveal these sorts of things after the ninth glass of wine at a dinner party

somewhere or something, but there we are.

Exactly.

Now we move to the most grim episode in the history of the Luna Park,

the horror of the night of Saturday the 9th of June 1979,

and around about 10, 14 at night,

you record that the fire brigade were called to Luna Park.

They could see the blaze coming over the harbor bridge.

How bad was it once the fire brigade arrived at the Ghost Train?

Things were pretty bad.

You know, I interviewed firemen that were there that night,

the surviving boy from Waverly College who was there that night,

four boys from Waverly College,

and a father with his two young sons were killed in this fire.

It went up like Tinder Box,

because obviously it was paper mache and old school wood,

and it just burnt extraordinarily quickly.

And no matter how many fire brigades that came from all over Sydney,

there were about 12.

They couldn't get the water pressure to stop the fire.

Hoses were not working properly.

There was no sprinkler system in the ride,

and things went from bad to worse by the time everyone came to the park

to see what was happening.

People were streaming out.

The fire engines went through the mouth to get in,

there were so many people coming out.

It was very dangerous.

And I think we all know,

any of us that were Sydney scientists at age

would be marked by that night,

because it was a real black night in the history of the city.

I can't just kind of imagine the frustration of the fire fighters.

They've got this substandard equipment.

They haven't got any water pressure.

They had to draw water from Sydney harbor.

They did. Yeah, they had to draw water from the harbor,

and by that stage, you know, it took too long to put the fire out,

so they knew that there was very little hope for anyone

that may have been in that building.

What did they find when they went through the debris?

Terrible, terrible scattering of bodies

that were unrecognizable,

that were so unrecognizable as humans

that they sometimes thought they might have been mannequins in the ride.

So it's a terrible, terrible night.

The lead investigated,

Detective Inspector Doug Knight arrived at the scene,

and very quickly declared that the fire had been caused by an electric fault.

Did he have any expertise in this matter?

No, he was not.

Was there any evidence for this at all?

No, he was not a forensic expert.

He was not an arson expert or anything like that,

declared it very quickly.

And the whole site was bulldozed with indecent haste way too quickly.

This would never happen today,

because we don't know, actually,

if it was an accident or arson,

we didn't know back then.

So it was bulldozed within a couple of days.

So no...

Within 24 hours.

24 hours.

So no evidence could be retrieved after that.

No evidence.

And that is the very heart of the problem.

There is no evidence either way.

The coroner returned an open finding.

And the coroner said,

the probable cause was a tossed cigarette or a match.

Well, that's possible, I suppose.

Was there any evidence to suggest that might have happened?

No, it was just pure speculation.

No, it was not.

There was not.

The thing to remember is it was crack a night,

which was a very important thing in, you know,

Australia at that in that time.

A stray firework could have been it or a deliberate firework could have been there.

It could have been kerosene lighting it.

We don't know.

We don't know.

Several witnesses reported they'd smelt kerosene that night.

Yes.

One witness said he'd overheard a group of bikers

near the ghost train talking about spreading keros throughout the ride and lighting it up.

How much of this testimony was taken into the end?

None.

I think it was very little because of the 80 witnesses that were meant to appear

at the inquest very few.

Actually, I think it's like under 30 actually gave evidence.

I don't know why it was a different era.

And after that, a National Crimes Authority report found that the,

both the inquest and the investigation were both severely inadequate.

So we've had several investigations thereafter.

And nothing has really no one has ever come to a probable cause.

Detective Inspector Doug Noth that I mentioned earlier turned out to be an interesting character.

Tell me about him.

Well, he answered to Bill Allen,

who is one of the police commissioners that was ended up in jail.

Like I think it's pretty common knowledge amongst anyone that was in Sydney at that time

that the cops were pretty crooked.

You know, the police reporters I interviewed that were there that night.

Interestingly, they have never been called up to give evidence in any of these

and subsequent investigations since that everyone knew the cops were crooked.

Now, who are they were protecting?

I don't know.

We may never know.

But there's questions that remain.

And at this point, even the families who lost, who lost children there,

there's questions as to whether or not is it worthwhile having another inquest

to go through the embers of their grief again?

Is it worthwhile?

I don't know.

But there's so many answers that are not given.

Doug Knight was later found to be corrupt and to have links to Abe Safron,

who was known at the time as quite a colourful Sydney businessman,

the King of Kings Cross.

What was Abe Safron's interest in the Luna Park site?

Well, this NCAA report said that he'd coveted a site for 20 years.

Now, once we don't know why Neville ran,

the premier at the time would not grant a long-term lease to Leon Fink

and his partner, Nathan Spatt.

What we do know is when the park did reopen,

the Goldstein brothers got the lease.

And they are actually Abe Safron's cousin and his nephew actually ended up

being responsible for the counting of the park.

So we don't know.

Is the name has been linked.

Abe Safron's name has been linked to that Luna Park fire,

for as almost as soon as it happened,

and Martin Sharp is one of the first to put two and two together,

which is why I think he became obsessed with it.

He called his friend the night of the fire and immediately suspicious.

I don't know.

I wish I knew.

I wish had some answers.

If there's anyone out there that knows, please tell us,

because it's one of those unsolved mysteries,

which is at the heart of this book,

and maybe one of the reasons why I wrote it,

because as much as a place of fun it is,

it's also a huge place of sadness for me in my generation of Sydney scientists.

Yeah, it's hard to overstate the impact it had on the people of Sydney,

that disaster, the overwhelming grief,

and a feeling that something really beautiful had been tainted.

Martin Sharp, you mentioned there,

it's kind of sort of in spiritual terms, didn't he?

He's sort of like, he actually believed that something evil

had invaded that palace of innocence and fun that night.

Yes, and he did become quite obsessed with this whole sort of avenue of investigation.

An occult link, all sorts of things that he went down.

There were strange figures dressed in occult costumes around the park that night,

so it was really odd.

Well, what happened was they were actually at Circular Key

and that was on the front page of the Sun newspaper

and the boys, the gods and boys were photographed with them before they got on the ferry there.

So there's so many lingering mysteries that came out many years after the park

and people forget, you know, it closed immediately after the fire, the day after,

and it was closed on and off for 17 years.

So this laid an open space for lots of gossip and controversy about what actually happened

because it was just this sad, sad place, this sad face.

And even people forget that the harbor was without a lunar park face

for seven years.

So that was quite some time.

And one of the remarkable stories is the protest movement

that Martin Sharp formed with his friend Peter Kingston to save the park.

And we really have that band of merry artists

and the various other people, like architects like Sam Marshall

and various other people that banded together to fight for the cause of saving lunar park.

How much of an achievement was that because there was a lot of talk about

demolishing the site and turning it into a casino block of apartments

because that's the kind of imagination a lot of people have for such places.

Oh, the casino or a block of apartments.

For a protest movement to stand in the way of property developer singer

gigantic bucket of money like that.

It's quite a heroic achievement.

It was absolutely heroic.

And you've got to look back at it as one of the greatest accomplishments

of the urban environmental movement in Sydney.

They had protests, they had mental, as any in place, something is missing.

They had people walk across the Harbour Bridge to Macquarie Street.

They had people dressed as lunar park costume people.

They really captured the imagination of Sydney.

And people just wanted to say hands off our childhood.

This is a really important place.

So it is really quite remarkable that this protest movement was listened to.

And so the first time it reopened in 1982 as the homicide of amusement parlor

and that was from 82 to 88, then it closed again.

And so they had to sort of dust off the mothballs and come out again

and fight to save lunar park.

And the remarkable thing about that was that was the time when it was going to be turned into

an adult amusement park with high rise again.

And then the government gave the operators a deadline in 1990 and said,

if you're not going to keep it as an amusement park, you cannot have the lease.

Well, they defaulted on the lease.

And this amazing thing came out of that in the lunar park site act of 1990.

It's extraordinary.

It is one of only two amusement parks in the world that must remain an amusement park.

So it was set in legislation thereafter that if you're going to take this lease,

you have to do what the people of Sydney want to do with it.

And that is to remain an amusement park.

It was painstakingly renovated, revived, brought back to its original glory.

But then it had to close down yet again over legal action led by the architect Harry Sidler

over the big dip.

What was the controversy there?

Well, we know in New South Wales and Australia, we call that sort of protesting

nimbyism not in my backyard.

In this case, the residents of Milson's point, it was numbyism not under my balcony in that

this new set of owners in the 90s.

We forget that the park was pretty much closed for only 13 months of the 90s.

So when it was being reopened in 1995, I didn't really consult.

It was run by a lunar park trust.

They were in conjunction with Wittingslows amusement park that had run the Moomba Festival.

So they put in the southern hemisphere's biggest big dip.

Now, in hindsight, it's kind of ill advised because it did go right by the sightlines

of Harry Sidler's office and home, as well as all the other neighbours.

It was way too big for the site compared to the old big dip, which had to be demolished after the fire.

So it was perhaps not the best consultation with the neighbours.

So they eventually banded together and took it to the Supreme Court,

which impacted the number of hours the big dip it could operate.

So you could only operate on a Friday and Saturday night, which made it financially unviable.

So the park had to shut 13 months just after it had opened again.

You know, I get that this thing had become the big dip had become much bigger and much noisy at two.

I guess, you know, people have a right to quiet enjoyment of their property, I think.

But at the time, I remember it was seen as yet another example in the 90s of rich old people

using the money and power they have to crack down on the pleasure of young people.

This was happening right across Sydney at the time, pubs that had bands were being shut under noise complaints.

They wanted to have the quiet of a North Shore library there.

What do you think about all that, Helen?

Yeah, absolutely. Why would you leave near an amusement park if you'd like the sound of children?

I also think sometimes the side of something so gloriously art Daco offended the modernist's aesthetic sensibilities of Harry Silas.

Yes.

It was like modernism versus art Daco and modernism brutalism won.

Quite possibly.

I mean, the point is it was a childhood venue of just delight for so many people.

And so it did seem very mean on their part to do this.

And court case after court cases happened thereafter as well.

But that's again, this is a remarkable roller coaster story and that you think,

okay, surely it's not going to survive.

Then it does.

And when it shot in 1996, I think people really thought about this.

It's really curtains.

And then then of course remarkably Sydney wins the Olympic Games.

And so suddenly it's, oh, actually, maybe this is a pretty good spot.

Maybe we should look and re-opened in time for the Sydney Olympics just briefly.

And then new owners that banded together to bid for it in the late 90s were very experienced entertainers.

So Peter Herndt had run the Anandale and the Hope Town pub like sites of live music.

And his partner Warwick Doughty ran Demtell.

But wait, there's more and we'll throw in a free set of snack knives.

And their idea for re-bidding for this was to turn it into the north side's metro theatre for live music venues.

And so they won the contract by teaming with Michael Edgley,

the former circus entrepreneur and metro multiplex,

which promised to build some corporate offices for Luna Park right beside it.

And together they banded together to convince the government that they were the right people.

And I think they actually were.

They had worked in pubs and knew all the sort of ins and outs of the law.

But they needed to do so much renovation work.

Because of course, by this stage, it's recognized for its heritage value.

So everything has to be painstakingly restored.

That means getting rid of all the asbestos of the old rides and of the old buildings had to be restored.

A lot of the original stuff had sadly been sold at auction,

which broke Ted Hopkins heart in 1981 because it was the old carousel.

Yes, the carousel got sold for $140,000 in ship to America.

And then Martin Sharp gets to the auction where they're auctioning off Coney Island and all its rides.

And Martin convinced his mother to buy the turkey trot and all the rides.

And they're amazingly they remained and they remained on site.

So we still have them there and we have Martin to thank and his mother for giving the money to making sure that they're there still.

So again, I just think they thought there's just no way it's going to reopen again.

So when these new owners came with renewed enthusiasm and renewed money,

they remarkably cleaned up the place and it's been open ever since but for COVID.

I took my daughter there when she was little

and I was reading myself for a bit of heartbreak or something or to see a very different place.

There was so much there that I remembered from my childhood, particularly in the Coney Island except at the back.

So much of the original park was sort of gleaming and revived and really beautiful.

I was really quite surprised and moved and delighted by that.

What's it like for you today to look at?

Oh, look, I love going there still brings a big smile to my face.

You know, I can feel that feeling of not just my own, but I see I'm around children that are there.

And they are so in love with the place that they kind of run to the towers and hug them because they're so excited

and all they're clinging to the gate waiting for it to open.

And the idea that you're into that park by going through a suggestive system is gloriously disgusting.

It is because your digestive system is often upset by going on some of the ride.

You're right. It's just this lovely moment of seeing kids enjoying it there still.

And you know, they've also had to reacquaint to themselves with how people have fun these days.

So the big top was to bring music into the park.

And now what the current management have done is teamed with Netflix.

So they've got immersive experiences from both squid games and stranger things.

So they're sort of like catering to digital natives.

It will always have that young kids desperate to meet the height requirement to go on some of the rides.

So desperate that they'll stack their shoes with socks and inner souls to make sure that they reach the height limit.

You'll always have that.

And then you'll have grandparents that want to take their children there and parents that want to take their children there to relive their youth.

But it does have to look at different ways for it to survive.

So it is.

And it will always be an amusement park by the sea now.

It has to be.

But they've got to look at new ways to survive.

It's a business.

So the Lunapark side act means that it really must remain an amusement park.

So it's protected by government legislation.

Aren't we lucky that that will always be the case?

Certainly are.

And such a pleasure is always speaking with you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Richard.

Helen Pittsburgh is called Lunapark, the extraordinary story of the showmen,

shysters and schemers who built Sydney's famous fun park.

Today's conversation was made on the lands of the Gadigal people.

The producer was Jennifer Leake.

Executive producer is Eliza Kirsch.

I'm Richard Fightler.

Thanks for listening.

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