Helen Pitt

And then, of course, remarkably, Sydney wins the Olympic Games.

And so suddenly it's, oh, actually, maybe this is a pretty good spot.

Maybe we should look at it reopened in time for the Sydney Olympics, just briefly.

And then new owners...

that banded together to bid for it in the late 90s were very experienced entertainers.

So Peter Hearn had run the Annandale and the Hopetown pub like sights of live music and his partner Warwick Doughty ran Demtel.

But wait, there's more and we'll throw in a free set of snake knives.

And their idea for rebidding...

for this was to turn it into the Northside's Metro Theatre for live music venues.

And so they won the contract by teaming with Michael Edgley, the former circus entrepreneur, and Metro Multiplex, which promised to build some corporate offices for Luna Park right beside it.

And together, they banded together to convince the government that they were the right people.

And I think they actually were.

They had worked in pubs and knew all the sort of ins and outs of the law, but they needed to do so much renovation work because of course, by this stage, it's recognised for its heritage value.

So everything has to be painstakingly restored.

That means getting rid of all the asbestos of the old rides and the old buildings had to be restored.

A lot of the original stuff had sadly been sold at auction, which broke Ted

Hopkins Hart in 1981 because it was... The old carousel?

Yes, the carousel got sold for $140,000 and shipped to America.

And then Martin Sharp gets to the auction where they're auctioning off Coney Island and all its rides and Martin convinced his mother to buy the turkey trot and all the rides in there.

Amazingly, they remained and they remained on site.