Ghost Train tragedy: Luna Park fire remains a mystery
It is the unsolved mystery that has haunted Sydney for 40 years — a father and his two sons, together with four school mates, perished after a fire broke out inside the popular Ghost Train ride at Sydney’s Luna Park on the night of June 9, 1979.
NSW
Don't miss out on the headlines from NSW. Followed categories will be added to My News.
It is the unsolved mystery that has haunted Sydney for 40 years — seven lives wiped out in minutes on what should have been a night full of fun.
A father and his two sons, together with four school mates, perished after a fire broke out inside the popular Ghost Train ride at Sydney’s Luna Park on the night of June 9, 1979.
Terrified riders ran from the attraction as the blaze ripped through it just before 11pm. Survivors recalled being confronted by walls of fire as the carriages made their way out of the tunnels.
The first fire fighters who arrived at the scene struggled to access water, eventually having to pump it directly from Sydney Harbour.
When the inferno was eventually extinguished, rescuers made a devastating discovery. Huddled together in one section of the tunnel was John Godson with his sons Damien and Craig.
In another, four friends from Waverley College — Jonathan Billings, Richard Charles Carroll, Michael David Johnson and Seamus Rahilly — were also found dead. A fifth friend who was in the carriage behind the boys survived.
Watching on as firefighters battled the blaze was Jenny Godson who was met with the horrific scene after leaving her husband and sons to go and buy an ice cream.
MORE LUNA PARK FIRE STORIES:
‘Bizarre’ craving for ice-cream saved the life of a mother who lost entire family
Mystery of the satanic figure snapped with Luna Park fire victim hours before death
On holiday from the country NSW town of Warren, the family was nearing the end of their night and had four more tickets left to use. The two youngsters picked the Ghost Train, which had been a favourite at the park for four decades.
But just as the family was about to head to the ride, Mrs Godson developed an urge for a sweet treat and decided to let the others go ahead.
“I was just standing at the door of Coney Island and all of a sudden I got this thought that I wanted an ice cream — it was just the most bizarre thing,” she told The Daily Telegraph in 2015.
“I asked the boys if they wanted an ice cream and they said no so off they went with their father and that was that — I didn’t meet them there, they were gone.”
Instead what she was confronted with was a giant pile of smouldering wood, and the unimaginable realisation she had lost her entire family.
“I wanted to stay there and I remember someone standing beside me and until a few years ago I didn’t realise who that was but it ended up being Jason (Holmon), the fifth boy who was with the other boys (who died),” she said.
In the days after the tragedy tales of survival began to emerge.
Frank Juhassi, who was on the Ghost Train with his wife, spoke with a Daily Telegraph reporter about his lucky escape from the doomed ride.
“The car nosed through the doors and we could see four metre flames all around us,” he said. “We were seconds away from death.”
Investigators initially believed an electrical fault was responsible for starting the fire, but several inquiries failed to back that up and over the years there were persistent rumours that it was deliberately lit.
In 2007 the niece of one of Sydney’s most notorious crime figures, nightclub owner and developer Abe Saffron, told a Sydney newspaper that her uncle was the one responsible for starting the fire.
Saffron had reportedly been interested in buying the park and was a suspect in at least seven other fires about the same time.
Mrs Godson, who now goes by the name Poidevin, thought this was a strong theory, but conceded she wasn’t sure anymore what had happened.
She said she had been contacted by a Queensland man in the years before talking to The Daily Telegraph in 2015 who also had a theory of what happened that night.
“He’s rung me over the years a couple of times and he’s suffered quite a lot of stress over it but he believes there was someone letting off fire crackers,” she said.
“But I truly don’t know. I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
A coronial inquiry held into the seven Luna Park deaths failed to determine a cause for the fire but did come down hard on the amusement park’s management for not having an appropriate fire suppression plan in place.
A decade later a second investigation was opened but no new evidence was brought forward and still no cause was determined. That investigation did criticise both the police investigation following the fire and the coronial inquiry.
Mrs Godson, who gave birth to a daughter several years after the tragedy, took several years to process her grief, moving from her central west home and rebuilding her life.
She has since become a firm believer in fate.
“I just feel it was all meant to be,” she said in 2015.
“For me to walk out of Coney Island and want an ice cream — I hardly ever ate ice cream — but I had this strange desire to have it and when I looked back on that it was totally bizarre.” History page
MORE