Helen Pitt uncovers the history of Sydney’s iconic Luna Park and the history of amusement parks from world fairs to Coney Island and beyond.

Like many Sydneysiders, Helen Pitt has vivid memories of a childhood trip to Luna Park. She and her friends got giddy and fell off the spinning Joy Wheel, flipped upside-down on the Zipper, and she had to be coaxed by her father onto the fearsome slides. Giggling and seeing her friend Jo’s projectile vomit on the Rotor (a large drum that rotates at 33rpm and sticks you to the walls as the floor drops away) was all part of the fun.

Children still vomit on the Rotor, but these days the staff call it a ‘protein spill’ in order to not cause any embarrassment. Staff discreetly whisk away any soiled clothing to be laundered and provide a spare set while you wait. The joke at the Park is that they can’t move the Rotor anymore because of the archaeological layers of vomit beneath it.

The Rotor was imported from Europe in 1949, at a time when the Park’s operators, David Atkins and Ted Hopkins (known as ‘Hoppy’), toured the world looking for new rides ‘to wow the crowds’. Hopkins had ‘built most of the rides himself’, purchasing plans from overseas and building them at the Park while it was closed for the three-month winter break.

When Sydney’s Luna Park first opened, however, all the rides and equipment had been bought and shipped from a Luna Park in Adelaide, which had been closed due to the effects of the Great Depression, a ban on Sunday opening, and townsfolk who had ‘eyed with suspicion the gaudy collection of whirling rides and rowdy amusements’ and claimed that the Park and become ‘a haven for undesirable riffraff and sharp carnival types’. Hoppy, a young electrical and mechanical engineer employed at the Adelaide Park, made detailed drawings of all the rides and personally supervised their reassembly when they arrived in Sydney. The most impressive of these, the Big Dipper, he numbered so meticulously that it went back together in Sydney ‘bolt-hole for bolt-hole’.

Atkins and Hopkins had both worked at Adelaide’s Glenelg Luna Park. Atkins was a showman and businessman, ‘a spruiker with a head for figures’ and a gambler who owned racehorses and speculated on the share market. He and Herman Phillips, one of the three American Phillips brothers who had launched the Adelaide Park, saw the potential for an amusement park in Sydney, so they bought everything, packed it up, and shipped all 1300 tons of it to its new home in ‘Sin City’, Sydney, ‘where Sunday trading was allowed’. There, Atkins became Park Manager.

At the harbourside site, next to the newly finished Sydney Harbour Bridge, Hopkins took on the mechanical and electrical work and with his team of 80 sparkies ‘carried out the electrical installations in a mere six weeks’. ‘Around 1000 skilled workers’, many of whom had been out of work since finishing building the Harbour Bridge, took just 12 weeks to complete the Park.

Both Atkins and Hopkins remained with Luna Park for most of their lives. Atkins, a colourful figure expert at promoting the Park, vowed that ‘no child should leave empty handed’ and, true to his word, he began by allowing children in free on opening day. Patti (then three years old) and her brother Bob (aged seven) were there:

When the man with the huge megaphone announced it was open we raced in. A great crowd of kids … They gave us five or six tickets for rides for free. I was too scared to go on some of the rides, so I gave half my tickets to Bob. He went on them all and left me alone as I wasn’t game to go on some of them …

We were all so excited because being children of the Great Depression, we didn’t have many surprises in our lives or things to look forward to. We were all screaming and enjoying it all with wonder.

Hopkins was also a skilled photographer and would climb onto the Bridge to get the best shots. Actor and comedian Lou Pollard, who lived close to Hoppy, near the Park, remembers that:

We kids would just hang out outside his garage – the roller door was always up and he would be inside tinkering away with his tools fixing something. He always wore a white coat when tinkering and was always smiling.

Hoppy, too, gave away tickets to the kids for free rides, and he became known as ‘Mr Luna Park’.

Atkins and Hopkins are just two of the many characters we meet in this book. There are showmen, showgirls, minibike riders, high divers, con-men, artists, entrepreneurs, dreamers, royalty, politicians and one notorious Sydney criminal. Pitt tells all their stories and covers the American origins of amusement parks that began in ‘the late 1900s, where fin de siècle America was struck by World Fair fever’.

Brief summer fairs gave way to ‘carnival-style rides and attractions’, as seen on the mile-long ‘Midway Plaisance’ at the World Fair in Chicago; then to a hugely popular airship, Luna, that would ‘hover over fake skies’ at the Buffalo Pan American Exposition and provided ‘A Trip to the Moon’ (where Moon dwarves gave pieces of green cheese to arriving moon-visitors); then to Luna’s permanent home at Steeplechase Park on the Coney Island broadwalk, just outside New York, alongside what the promoters called ‘the world’s largest ferris wheel’ (‘that was a lie’).

George Cornelius Tilyou, Steeplechase Parks’ founder, started out, age 14, ‘selling cigar boxes of Coney Island sand and bottles of salt water to gullible tourists’. Aged 17, he owned a beachfront property. Then, inspired by what he had seen at the Chicago World Fair, he created ‘Steeplechase – Funny Place’. There, Tilyou put into practice his belief that ‘a successful ride must look extremely dangerous yet convincing that the ride is completely safe’.

The first Luna Park, named after the founder’s younger sister, opened alongside Tilyou’s business on Coney Island in 1903, promising to be an ‘electric Eden’ thanks to being lit by Thomas Edison’s ‘million or so’ light bulbs. It was hugely successful.

The concept was brought to Australia by American vaudeville performer Erle Sigmond Salambo (Erle Livingstone), whose company transformed a Melbourne municipal tip at St Kilda into Dreamland. Sydneysiders, hearing of the project, ‘wanted one, too’, and a month after the opening of Dreamland, Sydney opened Wonderland: ‘the biggest open-air amusement park in the southern hemisphere’ on the site of the Royal Aquarium and Pleasure grounds at Tamarama beach, which had burnt down.

Luna Parks (the name has become generic) were immensely popular and there were always entrepreneurs willing to gamble on success. Australia would eventually have eight Luna Parks, which ‘revolutionised the way Australians were entertained’ and realised the hopes of the original Coney Island showmen as places where ‘adults could play like children and children could escape their adults’. But the changes in leaseholders and owners, and the closures and re-openings of the big Australian amusement parks that followed are hard to keep up with. As Pitt says, given their mixed fortunes,

it’s astounding two Luna Parks still exist in Australia. Melbourne’s, which opened in 1912 … celebrated 110 years in 2022 … Sydney celebrated its 90th anniversary on 4 October 2025.

Unsurprisingly, she has many stories to tell and she tells them well. There is the changing character of the face, through whose mouth visitors enter Sydney’s Luna Park; and ‘the mystery of the missing teeth’, stolen from the giant face one night by ‘the Great Teeth Robbers’. And there are some wonderful asides, like the development of the Australian cinema industry. And the creation of a mechanical elephant, complete with number plate, that was supposed to cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge to publicise the Park’s opening (just as Wirths’ Circus had marched six elephants across the newly opened Bridge), but it broke down when a Dodgem car was attached to it.

One harrowing chapter is devoted to the terrible fire on the Sydney Luna Park Ghost Train in which six children and one adult died. There are also accounts of the several later investigations into the fire, and rumours that it was caused by arson arranged by a Sydney underworld figure who had a history of being associated with unexplained fires at businesses on land he wanted to buy.

In Sydney, there have been no more complaints from the likes of Rev. John Calder who, before the Park opened, claimed that it would ‘become the menace to the morals and well-being of the people of the district’ and that there might be ‘orgies there’. But there have been complaints about noise pollution, so attempts have been made to form bonds with neighbours. Updating amusements, too, has always been necessary, but in our digital age this has become more challenging and links with Netflix to provide immersive experiences and turn the Park into an ‘experience destination’ for visitors are now being explored.

Sydney’s Luna Park still attracts young and old for its old-world charm and for these new experiences, and all are there to prove that every Luna Parks’ common catch phrase, ‘Just for Fun’, remains true.

Helen Pitt Luna Park Allen & Unwin 2026 PB 336pp $34.99

You can watch a YouTube video of Helen Pitt talking about Luna Park and showcasing some of its key attractions.

Dr Ann Skea is a freelance reviewer, writer and an independent scholar of the work of Ted Hughes. She is author of Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest (UNE 1994, and currently available for free download here). Her work is internationally published and her Ted Hughes webpages (ann.skea.com) are archived by the British Library.

You can buy a copy of Helen Pitt’s Luna Park from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW.

You can also check if it is available from Newtown Library.