Last night's watch. The first of a two-part documentary that investigates the 1979 fire that tore through the Ghost Train ride at Sydney's Luna Park, a tragic event that claimed the lives of seven people - a father and his two young boys, and four schoolboys who were enjoying their first night out without parental supervision. While faulty wiring was the official cause of the blaze, arson has long been suspected, and in this documentary, Caro Meldrum-Hanna investigates the event, sifting through the volumes of documents, photographs, and tape recordings which Martin Sharp, a Sydney artist who helped revive the park in the early-70s, compiled over the last thirty years of his life.
There are some devastating moments in this documentary. I was a boy of around the same age as the young victims when this happened, and can remember it being all over the news. As a kid who grew up just around the corner from Melbourne's own Luna Park, and who frequented it and the rides often, it haunted me for a long time. One of the most harrowing moments in EXPOSED: THE GHOST TRAIN FIRE involves the recollections from people who were outside the ride as it happened, listening to the chorus of terrified, high-pitched screams coming from within as the structure was quickly engulfed in flames.
It is sad to also see how much guilt remains in the minds of many - the parents who decided to let their kids go into the city on their own for the first time, the friend of the four boys who had to ride in a separate car and was plucked from it just in time, and the people who spotted the fire when it was still small and containable, but failed to report it to anyone when they emerged from the ride (they were kids themselves at the time, and since the fire broke out in a section of the ride that featured a fake fireplace, they all assumed the fire was a part of the attraction). Also heartbreaking is the recollection of the wife and mother of the man and two boys killed, who missed getting on the ride because she was buying an ice cream cone, and had to watch on in horror as the ride burnt to the ground.
There is a lot of old footage, photos, and news reports featured in this doco, which in Australia can be viewed on ABC i-view (not sure if it can be watched from outside Australia). The concluding episode airs this week.
