The rise and fall of the Southern Hemisphere's largest theme park

Countries & Cities · Published 4 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Imagine a sprawling kingdom of wooden coasters and cartoon lands, once the largest of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. Wonderland Sydney was a titan of Australian tourism, yet it vanished almost overnight, leaving behind only a street name and industrial ruins.

Opened on December 7, 1985, by New South Wales Premier Neville Wran, Wonderland Sydney (originally Australia's Wonderland) was designed as a high-scale alternative to the troubled Luna Park. Built at Eastern Creek with backing from major entities like James Hardie and Taft Broadcasting, the park was heavily modeled after Canada's Wonderland. It featured distinct themed zones, including 'Goldrush', 'Medieval Faire', and 'Hanna-Barbera Land', the latter of which hosted iconic characters like Scooby-Doo and The Flintstones. The park's scale was immense, eventually becoming the largest by land area in the Southern Hemisphere.

The park's engineering was headlined by 'The Bush Beast', a 975-metre wooden roller coaster that claimed the title of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere until 1999. Other notable attractions included 'The Beach' water park, which opened in 1988, and the 'Australian Wildlife Park' in 1990. However, the park's geography eventually became a liability. By 2002, management decided to close 'Little Wonders Land' because the park was deemed too large, with rides spaced too far apart for optimal visitor flow. This led to a period of consolidation where many rides were either relocated or scrapped.

The park's demise was a complex tapestry of global and local factors. While the Sunway Group blamed the failure on everything from the September 11 attacks and the 2002 Bali bombings to the SARS virus and the 2003 bushfires, critics pointed toward management issues. The gates finally closed on April 26, 2004. By September 2005, the site was completely demolished to make way for an industrial estate called Interchange Park. Today, the only physical remnants are traces in the surrounding bushland and a single street still bearing the name 'Wonderland Drive'.

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