Tamarama  

 Tamarama Beach

The name Tamarama is thought to originate from the aborigines who lived there before white man came to settle. Their word 'gamma gamma', meaning storm, could be where the name came from.

The recent nickname for Tamarama is 'Glamarama'. You only have to see the tanned topless female bodies on the sand to know why this is, and maybe it is also a throw-back to the Aborigine word!

    These first settlers had fresh water running into the Tamarama gully. They have left their rock carvings of a shark and fish on a ledge near the sea. They have left their mounds of shells at Tamarama in shelters in the rocks.

Old photos of Tamarama at the turn of the century show a Fun Park ("Wonderland") which was a very popular tourist venue, especially for Europeans. It had an overhead cable car running across from the 2 headlands on either side of the beach.

It also had a roller coaster, a circus ring with circus performers, a child-friendly elephant called Alice, which took children for rides around Tamarama Park. There was a Japanese tea room, a theatre for live performances, and a roller-skating rink, all brilliantly lit from above by the new-fangled electric light.

 The Roller coaster was an adaptation of the original "Switchback Railway" which was created by La Marcus Adna Thompson for Coney Island, New York, in 1884. Thompson was called "the father of gravity" for his invention, and in 1885 the 'lift-hill' was added where the Coaster was pulled to the top of the hill and released.

'Wonderland' at Tamarama employed 160 people, and a tramcar brought visitors from Sydney to Tamarama via Bondi Beach.

 The area around 'Wonderland' at Tamarama was fenced off with barbed wire, thus closing the beach to those who just wanted to swim or surf there. The surfers didn't like this, so at the weekends they brought with them wire-cutters and cut their way through the wire. They were arrested by the police, and the next weekend it would all happen over again.

Finally, complaints from residents about the noise, and allegations of cruelty to the animals forced the Tamarama Fun Fair to close in 1911.  

Mural on wall of Tamarama Surf Lifesavers Club

depicting 'Wonderland'

 Read more of the history of Tamarama, about the Aquarium  and the Hot Air Balloon Escapade.

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