Events
The Story of Luna Park: Helen Pitt in Conversation with Sarah Macdonald – 7th May
Date: Thursday 7th May 2026
Time: 6pm
Location: Avalon Beach Surf Club
*Doors open at 5.15pm so come early, grab a drink and enjoy the view
Join us for an evening with one of Bookoccino’s favourite authors, Helen Pitt, sharing the extraordinary story of the showmen, shysters and schemers who built Sydney’s famous Luna Park.
Helen will be interviewed by the wonderful Sarah Macdonald, divulging tales of con men, criminals, and crooked cops who make up the colourful history of the park.
——
For decades, the young and the young at heart have loved the Luna Park face and its promise of laughs and thrills – and a whiff of danger.
Helen Pitt has uncovered Australia’s intriguing Luna Park story. Like the circuses, from which amusement parks evolved, this is a tale with elephants, performing snakes and many ringmasters.
The story starts in late 19th-century America, and follows the eight fun parks that opened—and closed—across Australia. The most famous of them all, Sydney’s Luna Park, has a history that’s truly a roller-coaster ride like its trademark Big Dipper, which was shipped piece by piece from South Australia for its 1935 opening.
From the engineering feats of its construction in the dark days of the Depression to the tragic deaths of six boys and a father in the 1979 Ghost Train fire – one of Sydney’s most heartbreaking unsolved mysteries – and despite financial disasters, legal battles and closures, Luna Park survives, glittering by the water.
