Helen Pitt on the mystery of the missing Luna Park teeth
- Allen & Unwin
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Read an extract from Luna Park by Helen Pitt about the mystery of the missing Luna Park teeth.
In 1974, Sydneysiders were gobsmacked to learn on 25 July that six of the giant face’s teeth had been extracted overnight.
The saga of the stolen teeth made front page and evening news bulletins. ‘The giant’s face at the entrance to Luna Park is minus six teeth today,’ The Sun of 26 July 1974 reported. ‘They have been a landmark for the past 39 years . . . goodness knows why the teeth were stolen but we want them back,’ general manager Rod Earle said in a plea to the public.
Over half a century later, the mystery of the missing teeth can now be revealed.
It was students from the University of New South Wales, taking part in the annual university scavenger hunt. These students were in the middle of their first year at Baxter College, one of the university’s residential colleges that went head-to-head with competing residential colleges to bag the kitty required for the uni prank. The list of items required included one tooth from Luna Park, a condom machine from Sydney University, and a railway sign and seat from a Sydney train station.
‘We decided we’d give it a good hard crack,’ confessed one of the then students, now a recently retired New South Wales North Coast medico. ‘I had an old bread van from Fielder’s Bakery and we went out on a number of sorties to get our loot. We went to Luna Park on a 10 pm reccy one night and found it totally deserted.
‘One guy, from Condobolin [in country New South Wales], was a very agile climber, and good with a spanner and hammer. He had one tooth off in minutes, so then we decided to get as many as we could. Suddenly we heard a dog barking its head off. It belonged to the security guy, so we put them in the van and made a quick getaway.
‘I jumped the median strip on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in our bread van getaway vehicle to avoid paying the 20 cents toll. We laughed when the newspaper reports came out and the security guard said, “They must have been professional, I heard and saw nothing.”
‘When we got back to Baxter College we hid them under our beds. My mother came to visit from Wollongong the next day and asked me if I’d read about Luna Park’s missing teeth as she sat down on my bed. “You’re sitting on one of the teeth, Mum,” I told her.’
The Baxter College contingent managed to gather the teeth, plus a seat and sign from Lindfield railway station, as well as a condom machine from Sydney University. They laid out all their other booty on the university lawn anonymously. ‘It was up to the union to return the objects, not us,’ the retired doctor told me half a century later. Given there had been around this time so many people upset about ‘thieves stealing railway property’, the organisers of the treasure hunt, the university’s student union—who were not the actual teeth thieves—agreed to be photographed by The Sydney Morning Herald when they returned the seat and station sign to Lindfield station.
Among the Great Teeth Robbers were students who went on to become some of the state’s best dentists and doctors. It was probably the first and last dental extraction any of them ever performed for free.
Extracted from Luna Park by Helen Pitt, available now.
Luna Park
by Helen Pitt
The extraordinary story of the showmen, shysters and schemers who built Sydney's famous fun park.