Conmen, crims and crooked cops: a rollercoaster ride through Luna Park’s history

HISTORY
Luna Park
Helen Pitt
Allan & Unwin, $34.99

My brother had a part-time job at Luna Park back in 1981, and recalls that whenever he heard “Code 5” barked over the staff PA, he’d make himself scarce. It meant that a “guest” on one of the rides had thrown up. Mops and disinfectant required.

The euphemisms, but not the messy reality, have changed over the years, and in Helen Pitt’s marvellous history of the park, we learn that when a lunch is lost all over the walls of The Rotor these days, staff are expected to deal immediately with a “protein spill”.

Sydney’s harbourside shrine to fun, frivolity and high finance has been through countless thrills and protein spills since it opened in 1935, hastily constructed on land left over from the recently completed Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Luna Park has, at least in principle, always been “Just For Fun!” and Pitt’s tale certainly qualifies as a celebration of the laughs and screams of the millions of kids, parents and teenage thrillseekers who have had hilarious times there. Then again, this is Sydney waterfront real estate we’re talking about here, and by any reckoning the three hectares behind the toothy grin of Luna Park would fetch a staggering sum in today’s market.

There have been many attempts by developers to lay their hands on it, but since 2010 it has been listed on the NSW State Heritage Register, and the land can only ever be used as an amusement park.

If there is a dark side to this fun park (and of course there is), it is a story of money, power and at worst, lives needlessly lost. The ghastly and inherently 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, and the administration of justice in NSW. Pitt tells the story of that awful night with great care, and it’s to her credit that she manages to show such empathy for the families of the children lost, while being merciless in her take on the sloppy (some might say negligent, or worse) investigations that followed.

There will always be questions about the fire; about the crooked cops insisting that an electrical fault was to blame; whether it was a callous act of arson orchestrated by crime boss Abe Saffron; if the witnesses who were never called before the inquest might have brought the truth to light.

Pitt is a careful, professional journalist, but one who seems to be resigned to the fact that too many years, and too many of the people involved have passed, and that the truth will probably never be fully known. But one gets the distinct impression that in her mind, it stank then, and still does.

Accidents do happen at amusement parks, and it’s the creeping sensation that something awful might happen that makes scary rides, well, scary. That’s what they’re for. What would be the point 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 aboard? No point at all, especially given that you’d endured the same poke at his age and survived.

Pitt’s wonderful history of the park, and the amusement parks which inspired it – many of which it has somehow outlived – is both joyful and sobering. Amusement parks, as artist and lifelong Luna Park defender Martin Sharp never tired of pointing out, are landscapes that only exist because we are human. Creatures who will pay to be frightened, and somehow taken outside themselves, because fun is not just a word.

Pitt starts her story through the eyes of awestruck passengers aboard the world’s first Ferris wheel at the Chicago Fair of 1893, an enormous machine that could carry more than 2000 vertiginous patrons over 80 metres to the top. Back in Sydney, she tells of the demolition and re-assembly of the rides of a failed, Depression-crippled Glenelg attraction that were 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 colossus they’d risked their lives building.

There is so much to this book – I doubt that you will get to the end without laughing aloud, and shedding a tear.

Yes, Luna Park is just for fun, but there are so many tales, inspiring, hilarious, and tragic in its history, that it would be too easy to lazily highlight “the good bits” of this fascinating story. They’re all good bits. Pitt writes with a contagious enthusiasm, and her meticulous research, beginning with her own eighth birthday party adventure in the River Caves, unearths wonderful anecdotes and tantalising trivia.

Ah, amusement parks! Mirror maze reflections of the human condition, and the Luna Park story is certainly that. When you read it, which you really should, you’ll be glad that she took it on, and acknowledge that for all the fun, it can’t have been easy.

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