There is something seductive about...
the sinister artifice of a turn-of-the-century amusement park.
The creaking rotation of gaping clown heads; the beady eyes of mouth-shaped entrance-ways; the ratchet of wooden rollercoasters, as they heave small cars into the sky. All are attributes of a place that at once signals both fun and threat.
Sydney’s iconic Luna Park indeed has horror in its past. This Coney Island fairground opened its gates in 1935, and promptly closed them after seven deaths in a 1979 fire.
With dappled danger-related openings and closures then characterising the end of the nineteenth century, Luna Park was reopened once and for all in 2004.
In spite of a 20-year opportunity to reimagine and rebuild, it is telling that the designers of Luna Park opted to maintain the 1930s aesthetic. It is a design that thrills, and the ambiguity of a park that both promises and threatens, will continue to draw visitors in for decades to come.
