Fun parlour in Port
Penny Parlour
Simon Rogers is a man who travels back in time every day of his life. Simon has transformed a familiar old local building into his very own Luna Park.
The Penny Parlour, as he calls it, is a labour of love for a bloke who loves the past but is happy to live in the present and share his passion for penny arcades and carnival amusement games.
In total Simon has around 60 penny arcade machines and games from a time gone by. Things like football challenges, love meters, a boxing strength test, side show machine guns, palmistry, even a machine that for a penny, prints you out a picture of what your future wife’s going to look like. No guarantees of course.
Penny peeps
The penny peep shows are popular with visitors, if not exactly PC these days. In fact, they are very mild in these more progressive times but back in the early 1900’s they were positively scandalous. How’s that song go? In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, but now, heaven knows, anything goes.
Simon told Newsport that to him “these are not just hunks of metal; they are works of art and should be preserved for future generations”. While we were there a Melbourne couple arrived with their young son. “We seek these places out all over the world,” said Jason Hounam. “The last place was San Francisco but this is a beautiful collection and my wife Lisa and son Charlie are having heaps of fun, I mean you go to these modern places like Time zone, which is all electronic computer video games, but this is the equivalent of Timezone in the early 1900’s so it’s fascinating” he said. Jason is a computer systems engineer and he was fascinated by one machine that’s all mechanical and yet it figures out how many balls you’ve collected and which ones win and pays you out as a player accordingly. “That’s mind blowing because there’s zero electronics in there, it’s all engineering and mechanical, how brilliant is that” he said.
Gypsy soul
Simon is a descendant of the English Romany Gipsies, so he knows a lot of show people back in the old dart and it was those travelling carnivals that drew him to the amusements they showcased to entertain and enthral the crowds. “A friends’ parents had a travelling show and at 8 years old I went to stay with them, and I could see the start of video machines coming in and pushing these classic machines out. Ultimately, they were tossed into sheds or on garbage tips and have been all but forgotten” he said. They aren’t forgotten at his Penny Parlour.
How to go back in time
To find these treasures you need to venture out to the Craiglie Industrial Estate. Turn off Beor Street into Owen Street, go past the car wash on the left until you get to Reece Plumbing and then you’ll come to what looks like a dead end but in fact it’s the start of a wonderful walk down memory lane. Yours truly is a big kid at heart so this story was right up my alley. Within minutes of arriving at the former Shire Hall that once graced Macrossan Street, I was spending a penny and playing these old-world machines and feeling like a kid again.
Penny Arcade history
Penny arcades came into existence around 1905 and were all coin operated. Naturally only a penny was needed in those days to have fun. The arcades thrived right through the 20’s, 30’s and the 40’s. The most popular were fortune-telling and peep show machines. I remember the love tester machines, some of which I played when I visited Sydney’s Luna Park as a kid. It didn’t help me find true love, just made me poorer and poorer as I kept coming back for guidance. Coin-operated shooter games and gun games followed, which brings us up to the present day where fun has gone digital and, in some cases, very violent. These days a penny won’t get you very far with a visit to a modern-day arcade requiring a Westpac loan. Simon’s innocent Penny Parlour will only set you back $15 if you’re a grown up and $8 if you’re a child, with special rates for families and pensioners. Pennies are supplied free.