🎢 EXCLUSIVE CHAT: Helen Pitt And The Stories Behind Luna Park!

Helen Pitt has uncovered Australia's intriguing Luna Park story. It's filled with con men and criminals, crooked cops, failed politicians and movie moguls. Like the circuses, from which amusement parks evolved, this is a tale with elephants, performing snakes and many ringmasters.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to the Jonesy and Demanda podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Well, it might be one of the most iconic faces
in Australia, loved by young and old and young at heart.
I'm talking about the famous face that frames Luna Park.
Behind the big pearly whites are stories of con man, criminals,
crooked cops, and that's just the beginning to tell us more.
Is the author of a new book called Luna Park.
Helen Pitt.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
Hello, Hello, hell am I hello, we are great.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
I'm let me just say this, I am a lunar
park PERV. I love lunar parks so much.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Terrible title to have.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
It is a terrible title. But as a kid, I
love the Melbourne I love the Sydney one, and I've
always followed its history. I've just always loved it.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
It's such a great history and you can as look
down on it.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
We are now, but we can see the Sydney one.
But there are Luna parks all over Australia, or they were.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Indeed, there were eight once and the first was in
New York Coney Island, which sort of laid the template
for all of them around the world. They're actually about
four four in America and hundreds throughout the world, but
the first came to Australia in Melbourne in nineteen twelve.
The owners that brought it were American, so these American

(01:10):
entrepreneurs brought Melbourne's Lunar Park. Then they set up one
in Adelaide in nineteen thirty several years after, but alas
the good people of South Australia didn't really like it
the sort of crowd that it brought to Glenelg at
the end of the tram line, and they also didn't
like Sunday trading, so they wouldn't allow the operators to

(01:32):
have a rent reduction in the Great Depression when it
was set up in nineteen thirty and not having a
bit of a hard time, and they also didn't let
them trade on Sundays, so this was a bit of
a problem. So what the owners ingeniously did was pack
it all up and shipped it to Sydney.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Why is the story filled with con men and crooks?
What's all that about?

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Well, it is very interesting. There was a guy called
t h Eslick that was the man that dreamt up
the very first face in Melbourne, kind of like Christopher's
Case of the era. I think would be fair to
say he'd worked at amusement parks all over the world.
However his credentials were slightly questionable. He was at worked

(02:12):
on Melbourne's Lunar Park, then he came to Sydney. Then
he arrived in Brisbane and in nineteen thirty nine got
a whole load of people together to help build Luna
Park Brisbane. Now he got stacks of money from some
of Brisbane's biggest burgers. I think of the era, it
was meant to be a lunar park, but then the

(02:34):
war happened right at that time. It closes, he disappears
as overnight and owes a whole load of money to
all the people. Do have a face, did not have
a face, but had cloud Land, which was quite iconic
and people beloved the only other face there obviously there's
the Sydney face yep, and there was the Melbourne face.
And the other beloved face was in Perth, which was

(02:56):
at Scarborough Beach, and that was again started exactly the
same time as the Brisbane Lunar Park, at the beginning
of the war, and it was right on the beach
at Scarborough. It was a big blue cement rendered thing
equally iconic as the Sydney and Melbourne ones were, and
really very popular during wartime and right up until its

(03:18):
closure in nineteen seventy two when it was bulldozed and
became a shopping center which remains today. I know, and
everyone's got photos of their family out in the front of
Melbourne and Sydney's face, don't they. So you can imagine
it was a very popular.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Because Sydney One has certainly had a lot of controversy
in its time. It's had tragedy. Has the Melbourne one
had as much? Has it been? Has it ever been
threatened with being demolished?

Speaker 3 (03:42):
No? No, I mean it's had change, lots of different
changes of ownership, and it was shut during the it
opened prior to the war, and it was shut in
the First World War. It hasn't had a tragedy like
unfortunately Sydney's had nineteen seventy nine a ghost train fire
that seven six of them children, and that consequently led

(04:04):
to the closure immediately of the park and subsequent seventeen
years of closures on and off until two thousand and four,
where it's been open ever since, which is remarkable really.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Whenever I look at the lunar parks around the country.
You know Melbourne and Sydney, and I think they're great.
The Sydney ones had a massive facelift in the seventies,
had this horrible plaster head. Now it's all plastic. It
looks like a real housewife of Sydney had a ton
of worked done.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
It's had a stack of work done. It's actually been
eight different version. This one's fiberclass and has been here
for thirty thirty one years or so, but lots of
touch ups.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yes, just like the real housewipes. Very Sydney, Helen. It's
so great to catch up with you. Helen's book Lunar
Park is available now and it's a great read. Thank
you for joining us, Oh delight.