Bob Byrne remembers Magic Mountain at Glenelg, giant dog poo to some, house of fun to other

MALIGNED by its critics, Glenelg’s “giant dog dropping” theme park, Magic Mountain, was a huge hit with fun seekers.

MAGIC Mountain was Adelaide’s theme park at Glenelg and opened in 1982.

Strangely, it was never a major tourist attraction to the area but was very popular with locals who loved the rides, especially the giant water slides, said to be the largest in the southern hemisphere at the time.

One of the main criticisms about Magic Mountain was that it looked like a “giant dog dropping”. Indeed, it was not a pretty construction and I often wonder why the developers of the project chose such a design and colour.

One can only assume the exterior of the complex was intended to look like a large natural rock, but the huge waterslides encircling the building created an artificial effect anyway and put paid to any naturalness they were striving for.

Regardless of how it was seen by its critics though, thousands of youngsters flocked there, especially during the summer school holidays, to ride the slides and enjoy all its other attractions which included the historic carousel (which has been preserved), mini golf, bumper boats, dodgem cars, sky cycles, pinball machines, rifle shooting gallery and the video arcade games.

Writing recently on Adelaide Remember When daily blog, Matt Bubner recalled how he and his friends would hang out in the bay carpark at the end of Anzac Highway, meet at Magic Mountain and play all day on the 20c arcade machines.

“We’d spend many hours in the old wave shape building down there, then get a pie and iced coffee from the caravan-type outlet in the car park. I was 17 in 1988 and we knew how to have good clean fun, without anyone worrying where we were or when we’d be home.”

John Davies reminisced also: “My friends and I used to spend every weekend we could afford there. We’d catch a bus from Athelstone to the city, then the tram to Glenelg. Spend the day at Magic Mountain, and then catch a movie at the cinema, before catching the last tram and bus home.”

And Katrina Rowe wrote: “I loved Magic Mountain as a teenager and used to hang around there all the time with my friends, we were too busy having fun to notice if it was ugly or not”.

One of the great urban myths that circulated for years about Magic Mountain was that some kids were badly injured when vandals crept in one night and, using blue tack, attached upturned razor blades along the slides. However the story was found not to be true.

The end of the much-loved theme park was sealed when the Holdfast Shores development plan was first signed in 1997. That strategy saw a profit sharing agreement drawn up between the State Government, the Holdfast Shores consortium and local government, and included multi-storey apartment blocks, a hotel and other developments.

The land on which Magic Mountain stood was required in order to maintain the stipulated amount of open space.

For a brief time though, it appeared as if the funfair might escape its fate.

According to Wikipedia “There was a public-opinion survey in the lead-up to the May 2003 local government elections which, because of the popularity of Magic Mountain, caused the council to rethink its support of the plan. Their new-found opposition to the proposed beachfront high-rise apartments focused on Magic Mountain as the one parcel of land within the project that was under their control.

“The council’s campaign was ultimately unsuccessful and the second stage of the development received Government approval in early 2004. Magic Mountain closed for the last time on 18 July 2004 and was demolished soon after. The new development included construction of The Beach House, replacing Magic Mountain, which opened on 1 July 2006.”

People still miss it though, even after 10 years. It was part of being a teenager in the 1980s and 1990s in Adelaide, represented good clean fun and offered a safe and entertaining environment.