3 Paws Saloon Attic

This is a story demonstrating how one tragic event can send ripples over our timelines, to influence future events and how the choices we make in extreme situations can quickly become the difference between an adventure and disaster.

The tragic event involved an amusement park, built in 1935 on a large parcel of harbourside property next to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This complex has been renamed several times over the years but has always been known by my generation as Luna Park.

On the night of 9 June 1979, a fire mysteriously broke out in the building housing the Ghost Train Ride. The park’s staff rushed to the ride and managed to evacuate all the people from the carriages of the ghost train. Unfortunately, one adult and six children had decided to leave their carriage and try to escape through the building; all perishing in the attempt.

The coronial inquest was critical of the park’s management and staff, both before and during the fire, to the point that they had breached their duty of care to the public but stopped short of recommending that criminal charges be laid. There was also an open finding on how the fire started with several speculative stories circulating through the media of underworld conspiracies, etc. (Source: Wikipedia)

In the mid 1980’s, Luna Park’s head of security was contacted by their alarm company and informed that the monitoring systems for Coney Island (one of the park’s attractions) were not responding. The suspected cause was the security and fire alarm lines had failed. Of course, the head of security remembered the fire and was in no mood to risk having another tragedy occur on his watch, so he contacted our telecommunications company and demanded immediate action.

I was close to finishing my shift, when I got the call from my supervisor to rush down to Luna Park and “get the lines fixed”. On arrival, I was greeted by a burly security guard who briefed me on the problem and that I would not be allowed to leave until the lines were fixed. I made a “Beeline” straight to the main telecommunication box, that fed the entire park to prove whether the problem was inside the park or outside in the street.

To my disgust, I could not find any records of the lines passing through the box, which meant that I would now have to conduct a lengthy search inside the park to try and find an alternate entry point. At the two-hour mark, I decided it was time for somebody else to share my misery, so I called in a linesman to try and trace these cables from outside in the street to inside the park.

Within thirty minutes, my (now) best friend, the linesman, appeared at the security office to inform me that he had found the problem but there was no way that it would be fixed that night. More than five hundred feet of cable had been dug up and destroyed on a building site directly behind Coney Island. We informed the head of park security, who shrugged his shoulders, thanked us for our efforts and informed us that he would arrange for his “people” to keep an eye on the building overnight.

I walked out of Luna Park and into the night with a smile on my face. It really did feel like being released from jail (I suppose). Looking to the south, the harbour was lit up by a tremendous flash of lightning, accompanied by the ominous roll of thunder. Now I could have some fun driving home with a storm raging all around me.

I only just made it back to my van before the storm hit, sending lightning bolts down all around me and rain that was so heavy that if I put the van’s headlights on “high beam”, the reflection off the rain would “white out” the view of the road in front of me.

On my slow journey home, I came across flooded sections of the road where I was forced to drive on the median strip which divides traffic travelling in both directions on the same road. This strip is raised about six inches above the road, so driving on this strip raises your vehicle six inches higher above the water. At this stage, I had not considered the route home, except that I was taking the shortest way (according to distance).

The gravity of the situation did not register until I was on the southern approach to the bridge that spans Middle Harbour (one of the arms of Sydney Harbour).  The bridge slopes down from the northern (hilly) side to the flat southern side. The structure was now acting like a storm water drain, funneling water down from the steep northern side across the bridge and collecting in an ever-deepening pool on the southern side.

I realized that I would not be driving home this way. Even if the pool of water could be negotiated, the torrent of rushing water across the four-lane bridge would inundate the engine which would stall, leaving me stranded on the bridge with no means of escape.

As I turned the van around and started slowly retracing my steps, I knew that the key factor in making it home was now planning an alternate route that kept to the high ground and avoided any valleys or low-lying areas. While this strategy sounds simple, I could now anticipate potential “trouble spots” which required some thought on how or if they could be avoided. In the end it was a simple choice of two routes – one crossing Middle Harbour further upstream but with the same problem of water rushing down both approaches to the six-lane bridge to collect in the center, or, driving a considerable distance to the northwest, avoiding any bridges but through low-lying areas that were unfamiliar to me.

I chose to drive in the area that I knew extremely well and made my way to the second bridge crossing.

As I approached this bridge, my heart sank as I peered ahead and saw the blue flashing lights of a police car. I pulled up alongside the sodden policeman who informed me that the way was blocked and to try another route. At that moment a car passed us going up the hill, making his words sound a little bit hollow.

I told him I was on my way to fix a customer’s phone line that was tagged with an urgent medical priority and I had already tried the other route, but it was flooded out. The policeman swore under his breath and gave me instructions to drive on the median strip and I might get through. If the van started to float, get out immediately and swim back to higher ground. The bridge is at least one hundred feet high and as the water level got higher, it would only be a matter of time before the water would start spilling over the sides of the bridge.

His parting instruction to me was take it slow but do not stop, which I followed exactly, and I made it through to the other side. As I drove up the hill and away from the bridge a wave of elation swept over me, which lasted about a minute when I was stopped by another policeman.

This time, I was questioned extensively about where I was going and why. Fortunately (for me) I told the truth and admitted that I just wanted to get home and make sure my mum was OK. The policeman frowned and told me that my house was now situated on an island surrounded by flood waters. Now it was my turn to frown as I pictured in my mind the neighborhood around mum’s house. The high ground was along the beachfront but there was one intersection along this route that always flooded after a downpour. I asked the policeman for any information about my intended route, as well as any advice for getting past the intersection.

All he could tell me was that he had seen cars mount the sidewalk around the intersection and get through. Highly illegal and risky but nobody (the local police force) had time to stop these drivers and book them. He wished me good luck and we parted with a knowing smile.

The intersection was indeed one large pool of water and I found myself in a queue of cars that were taking turns at trying to get through. I watched as drivers made their choices on how best to avoid becoming yet another floating car, bobbing around in the middle of the intersection. The answer to their dilemma was obvious; do not try going through the intersection but stick to the shallower outsides and yet by the time my turn came, I had watched four drivers make the wrong choice!

I was determined to take no risks, so I eased the van onto the footpath and slowly went around one corner of the intersection. I glanced in the rear-view mirror and noticed that the other cars behind me were “following my lead”. There is wisdom in that expression “Monkey see, Monkey do”.

As I drove along the beachfront road, I remembered that my grandfather had called our house “Dunecrest” after it was built. I only now saw the relevance in the name. He was referring to the house’s location on top of the original sand dune that ran parallel to the beach. Stick to driving on the top of the dune and make it home.

I pulled into the driveway, applied the handbrake, turned off the engine and sat in the van thinking about all that had happened that night; what fate had dished up, the choices that I had made, the help from two policeman and where this night’s adventure had really started.

Just then I realized that something had changed; the constant noise of rain on the van’s roof had stopped. In a philosophical mood, I turned off the headlights, locked up the van and headed inside. As I walked through the front door, I was greeted by mum’s commentary on how I took my time getting home. I was happy as I knew that she was blissfully unaware of all the dramas occurring just outside.

As a footnote, I am writing this account of one night’s drama and adventure in respect to those people in the Queensland regional center of Townsville that have had to endure unprecedented flooding for over a week - some losing everything. Also a prayer to the seven people who lost their lives in the Luna Park fire, all those years ago.