This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
Site-level location · 37.8680° S, 144.9768° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
On 13 December 1912, Mr Moon opened his giant mouth to St Kilda and welcomed thousands of people into Luna Park for the first time.
That sentence, from the park's own history, dates the oldest object in this entire catalogue. Everything else here is post-war; most is post-1960. The Big Banana at Coffs Harbour, conventionally treated as the beginning of the Australian tradition, opened fifty-two years after Mr Moon.
Which raises a genuine question about where the tradition actually starts. An enormous face built as an entrance, designed so that visitors walk through the mouth of it, is doing everything a Big Thing does – scale, recognisability, a landmark that names the place – decades before anybody thought of putting a fruit beside a highway.
Luna Park's own material calls the face one of Melbourne's most recognisable and photographed, and after more than a hundred years at St Kilda the park describes itself as the best known and most loved of Victoria's theme parks. The entrance is part of a heritage-listed operating amusement park, so the object is protected in a way almost nothing else here is.
St Kilda itself was first recorded by the colonial surveyor Charles Grimes sailing into Melbourne from Sydney in 1802, settled by grazers from the late 1830s as Green Knoll, and renamed under Charles La Trobe. By 1900 it was Melbourne's premier beachside location, which is why the park was built there.
Mr Moon has been rebuilt and repainted repeatedly; the current face is not the 1912 fabric.
Access is restricted because the park has trading hours.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
Luna Park’s own heritage material confirms the face has welcomed visitors since the park opened in 1912 and describes it as one of Melbourne’s most recognisable and photographed faces. The entrance remains part of the heritage-listed operating amusement park.
ACCESS
Pedestrian/public-realm attraction. No vehicle destination is required; approach on foot from the surrounding public realm.
