Luna Park, Melbourne, Victoria

Melbourne's Luna Park may have seen better days, but try telling that to the hundreds of thousands of children, teenagers and adults who flock to this fun park throughout the year. Entry is free, but of course the rides and attractions are not. I visited on a Monday afternoon, and the place was buzzing with activity, and excitement. The rides and attractions are somewhat 'old school', and small in scale  compared to large, modern fun parks, but it is very popular just the same.

Overlooking Port Phillip Bay, this historic park—now in its 105th year—has been a favourite destination for generations of Melbourne families, and visitors alike. NOTE: Luna Park is open every weekend, and every public holiday except Christmas Day. However, it is not open during the week during school terms—or to put it another way, it is only open during the week when school’s out for summer, and other mid-year vacation periods!

Having said that, just to confuse the issue, the Park does open for the occasional special event during school terms, so I highly recommend readers check the Luna Park Opening Hours page to see if it is open for just such a special occasion.

The Ride of Your Life?

Luna Park offers 18 attractions which are suitable for a wide range of ages. However, all rides carry a minimum height restriction (and in some cases a maximum height restriction). Very young children may have to be accompanied on some rides by an adult.

Check Luna Park’s Rides and Attractions page to see a complete list of rides and which restrictions (if any) apply to them. Speaking of which, among the more exciting attractions Luna Park features the Circus of Screams, Power Surge, Twin Dragon, and Spider rides, and those ever present fair ground staples, the Sky Rider Ferris Wheel and of course—Dodgem Cars.

Life is a Carousel, Old Chum…

Luna Park’s wonderful Carousel is said to be the largest and most elaborate in the Southern Hemisphere. Visually stunning, its 68 horses and chariots are individually hand painted and intricately decorated in brilliant colours. Each horse is unique and even has its own name.

The Carousel was built in 1916 by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company, and was number 30 out of a total of 80 carousels built by the company.

The Great Scenic Railway

With the Great Scenic Railway roller coaster, Luna Park lays claim to “the oldest operating roller coaster of its kind in the world,” although how they substantiate that claim, is unspecified. I assume the “of its kind” part of the claim relates to the fact that the Great Scenic Railway was originally built entirely of wood! Even more improbably is the fact that the carriages are still controlled by a brakeman who stands in the centre of each carriage and controls…what? Speed? Ascent and descent? Oncoming traffic? Okay, don’t panic. I’m only joking. That crack about oncoming traffic was put there to see if you are paying attention. 

Mummy, I’m Hungry!

The food franchises are of the fast food 'pie and chips' variety, along with the ubiquitous Fairy-floss (or Cotton Candy as Americans like to call it), pop-corn, snow-cones, and hot-dogs. While the prices are quite reasonable the choices on offer leave much to be desired.

Café Luna is a little more upscale, and sells gourmet pizzas, deli-style sandwiches and burgers. Apparently the café also caters for vegetarians as well. Personally, if you are planning a long visit—and given that entry is free—I would recommend patronizing one of the local cafés or restaurants nearby where the meal choices are broader and healthier.

Visitors with Special Needs

While the main Luna Park site is accessible for visitors with special needs and disabilities, many of the rides and attractions are not able to accommodate people with major disabilities, or who are wheelchair-bound. Check Luna Park’s Special Needs page for a complete breakdown of what visitors with disabilities can expect when they visit the park.

Getting There

Visitors without their own means of transport, can get to Luna Park with a minimum of fuss and expense from the CBD by taking either a number 3a East Malvern-bound tram, or a number 16 Kew-bound tram from the tram stops on St Kilda Road by Federation Square.

Another option is the number 96 St. Kilda Beach tram which runs along Collins Street, and also takes visitors directly past Luna Park.

Here’s a video compiled from multiple roller coaster rides that give you a good look at what a ride on the Great Scenic Railway entails.

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IF YOU GO

Address: 18 Lower Esplanade, St Kilda, Port Phillip, Victoria. Phone: +61 3 9525 5033

Opening Hours… 

Luna Park Online…

Yarra Trams… for public transport options.

William Turner: A Painter Of Light

Just last month I wrote about The Frick Collection, and spoke about the wonderful range of great art and artists that are represented in this small, but important museum.

Taking place at the Frick, from now through until mid-May 2017, is a special exhibition titled “Turner’s Modern and Ancient Ports: Passages Through Time,” at which three monumental paintings by Turner will be on show, along with thirty or so other works encompassing oil, watercolours, and prints. The three major paintings at the centre of the exhibition are Harbor of Dieppe: Changement de Domicile, Cologne; The Arrival of a Packet-Boat: Evening, and The Harbor of Brest: The Quayside and Château, which is on loan from Tate Britain. The three port scenes are being shown together for the first time.

From Wikipedia we learn that Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) was an English Romanticist landscape painter who was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an importance that rivalled the painting of historic themes which was a very common practice when he was working as an artist. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting, and is commonly referred to as "the painter of light”.

Many of Turner’s greatest paintings are characterised by his unique pallet, which used newly invented pigments such as chrome yellow, and chrome orange. These gave his most famous works a golden hue that captured the light from the sun at its most evocative point, either early in the morning or later in the evening.

Although Henry Clay Frick bought Harbor of Dieppe and Arrival of a Packet-Boat, more than a century ago, the first American to buy a Turner painting was the New Yorker, James Lenox, a private collector. In 1845, Lenox bought—sight-unseen—the 1832 atmospheric seascape Staffa, Fingal's Cave. On receiving the painting Lenox was baffled, and "greatly disappointed" by what he called the painting's "indistinctness". When his views were relayed back to William Turner, Turner is said to have replied, "You should tell Mr Lenox that indistinctness is my forte.”

In April 2006, Christie's New York auctioned Giudecca, La Donna Della Salute and San Giorgio, a view of Venice exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1841, for US$35.8 million, setting a new record for a Turner work.

If you can’t make to the exhibition itself, here is a short video produced by the Frick which takes a closer look at the three paintings, and some of the other works that form that exhibition.

“Turner’s Modern and Ancient Ports: Passages Through Time”

At The Frick Collection, 1 East 70th St.

On now through May 14, 2017

Online: www.frick.org 

More about Turner at Wikipedia… 

My 52-Book-Year #1: Apex Hides The Hurt

Apex Hides The Hurt, by Colson Whitehead, was the first book I read at the beginning of January to kick off my 52-Book-Year Challenge. For a book that spends a lot of time talking about the importance of names, it was clearly a deliberate choice to feature a central character who remains nameless throughout the book. The man, referred to throughout only as 'he', is a nomenclature specialist. That is, a person whose skill in the advertising and market world is the naming of product names.

Apex, an adhesive gauze in the style of Band-Aids is our anonymous heroes career-crowning glory, and the product 'hides the hurt' in more ways than one. In fact, it is so good at hiding the hurt, that he loses a toe because the product masks an injury that festers and putrefies beneath the product's secure covering (sorry, did I just give away an important plot point? Not entirely, but never mind). Luckily, this is only part of the story Whitehead carefully unravels.

The main plot centres around our anonymous main character and his contract to help the council of the small town of Winthrop resolve an internal fight to decide on a new name. The three main choices being New Prospera, favored by a local software magnate; or to keep the existing name, Winthrop, favoured by a descendant of the town’s namesake; or to revert to the original name of the town, Freedom, since the town was originally founded by free blacks.

Written into his contract before our specialist agreed to take on the contract, was a clause that stipulated the town elders must accept whatever name he decides on. By the end of the book he decides to name the town… — oh, okay then, I won’t give that away. Before making this decision our protagonist must learn the history of the town, and that of its leading citizens, while getting to know the contesting forces, and forging alliances where he can. The book is filled with wry humor, and much insight into the world of the nomenclature specialist.

I was particularly taken with this sentence referring to the Hotel Winthrop where our consultant stays while working on the problem at hand; Whitehead observes—or is it our consultant—that, "It was a good place to make a bad decision, and in particular, a bad decision that would affect a great many people."

On its release, the book garnered mixed, but generally positive reviews with the New York Times placing it among its list of the 100 Most Notable Books of the Year. The Library Journal praised the book, noting that Whitehead does Shakespeare one better by posing the question, “What's in a name, and how does our identity relate to our own sense of who we are?” The San Francisco Chronicle gave the novel a mixed review, commenting, "It's pure joy to read writing like this, but watching Whitehead sketch out a minor character's essence with one stroke, while breathtaking, makes one wish the same treatment was afforded the people who ostensibly inhabit the novel's complex ideas." 

Finally, Jennifer Reese, writing for Entertainment Weekly, called the book "a blurry satire of American commercialism", adding, "it may not mark the apex of Colson Whitehead's career, but it brims with the author's spiky humor and intelligence." Ignoring the obvious pun in her comment, Jennifer was right about the book not being the high point in Whitehead’s career. That was to come ten years later when The Underground Railroad, his latest book, was published in 2016.

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Thanks to Wikipedia for providing some background information about Colson Whitehead, and for the various newspaper and magazine reviews quoted in this article.

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Readers interested in reading Apex Hides The Hurt, or The Underground Railroad may choose to do so by purchasing either the print or eBook versions via the links below. By doing so you will be supporting my blog at the same time. Thanks in anticipation.

Click here to purchase Apex Hides The Hurt…

Click here to purchase The Underground Railway…