Helen Pitt

Well, it was modelled on one that Ted Hopkins had seen overseas and he always just got the idea, got the patient for it and would make it himself when he got home, got the ideas, got the plans and put it together from the German plan.

So it was terribly scary and it still is today.

They're really scary if you ask me, the wild mask, because it goes out over the harbour and it's similar to the Big Dipper but just slightly more contained in that there's little cars.

So the thing is he would see, he would travel all through the winter months

in the summer season in the Northern Hemisphere and bring back great rides.

That's how the Rotor came back, came back from Germany.

He was always trying to find inventive ways to bring new things to Sydney and that was the appeal because it was like cutting-edge technology in that time.

But you're right, it was starting to get slightly run down by the late 60s.

Well, indeed.

Seriously?

Absolutely.

So the lease was being operated by Hopkins and he did not take up the lease renewal.

So...

Nathan Spatt and Leon Fink took up that.

And the first thing that they wanted to do was put in a $50 million World Trade Centre that Harry Seidler did the plans for.

The Asken government knocked it back remarkably.

And then it wasn't the last time that was attempted, though.

That was also, again, many years later when...

Barry Unsworth was Premier, that they wanted to make it an adult theme park.

Again, high rise.