Luna Park is turning 90, and love is in the air

For 90 years, a ride on Luna Park’s Ferris wheel has been the true test of many relationships – would she say yes? – while a ride through the River Caves was often remembered as the spot for the first pash.

The Rotor may have swept lovers literally off their feet, but the ride’s stomach-churning moves have been known to sour budding relationships.

Luna Park will mark its 90th birthday on Saturday with an event where 90 nonagenarians – plus or minus a few years – will ride the big wheel again.

Hopping on the Ferris wheel on Thursday, Brian Calford, 89, said he and his wife Bett, 87, of Port Macquarie – now married for nearly 70 years – have been visiting Sydney’s Luna Park for family outings for decades. It brought them joy, he said.

When they moved to Australia from the UK, they celebrated by bringing their nine-year-old daughter to the amusement park. Today, three of their family members work there – their 27-year-old granddaughter, Lyndsey Green, manages the park’s 600 staff, and their grandson and his wife are involved with the site’s live entertainment.

“Did you woo Bett up in the air?” the Herald asked Calford as he smiled through the winds that were giving the stilt walkers on the ground below a touch of the wobbles.

“Oh, she doesn’t like things like that,” said the former RAF member, an experienced parachutist who is unfazed by heights.

The Ferris wheel was always a popular place to pop the question, said former Herald reporter Helen Pitt, who has been writing a book about the park. “Often people would slip the attendant some money to stop their gondola at the top, so that a potential groom could ask his bride-to-be to marry him from one of the best views in Sydney.”

It was not without stress of a potential refusal, but also fear that the future bride could drop the ring from 36 metres above sea level onto the park or harbour below, she said.

The River Caves was renamed the “tunnel of love” for the filming of Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in the summer of 1958-59.

“Many young romantics made a beeline with their beloved to that ride after that, and lived happily ever after,” she said. The caves were closed in 1983.

Luna Park has attracted a record number of visitors this year, with 1.3 million passing under its newly painted smile, said John Hughes, the park’s chief executive officer. Today the heritage-listed amusement park retains the old rides, but has added new attractions, including the Stranger Things and Squid Games experiences.

The park’s 90th celebration events on Saturday are sold out. But the park is open throughout the long weekend and school holidays.

Pitt said it was lucky Luna Park survived. It is now one of two amusement parks in the world to be heritage-listed. “We sometimes forget the dark days after the tragic Ghost Train fire of 1979, when it was closed – on and off – for a total of 17 years, and when its trademark face was removed for almost seven years from November 1988 until January 1995,” she said.

Pitt’s new book, Luna Park, The intriguing story of Sydney’s famous funpark, will be published by Allen & Unwin in March 2026.

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