Helmut’s life in a fairytale

Andrew Mathieson
INSIDE 73-year-old Helmut Mayer’s body still lies a little boy’s heart and head full of fairytales.
Helmut’s father, Peter, and mum, Elisabeth, morphed the Anakie bush into the magic of Fairy Park back in 1959 when Helmut’s memories were still fresh full of the popular German folk Märchen narratives rather than any Aussie campfire yarn.
“It’s in our blood, fairytales and mythology,” Helmut insists.
“It’s pretty common all over Europe, but Germany in particular.”
The theme park’s home-made fairytale characters first appeared around the family’s Newtown home just a few years after the Mayer family migrated from their fairytale heartland in Germany’s south-west.
A couple dozen innocent gnomes and half a dozen traditional stories drew curiosity from onlookers.
“When we first started making models in Geelong all the neighbourhood kids use to hang around,” Helmut remembers.
“They’d sit, watch and ask my father ‘What are we making today, Mr Mayer?’.”
When the gnomes sold out quickly to find their way into Geelong backyards, the Mayers approached a pessimistic farmer for a parcel of scrub just north of Anakie.
They asked for a 12-year lease, but after less than three the owner sold the land to the family when the park started to make money.
“We moved out here primitively at first, sleeping on rubber mattresses and sometimes lilos,” Helmut recalls from the comfort of the sunroom in the family’s on-site home while sipping a favourite tipple, Jagermeister.
Son Garry, now 44, lives on the Anakie property and manages the park.
Now just carrying out the odd job to help at Fairy Park, Helmut grins when calling himself a “volunteer” these days.
Natural rock formations guided the design of Fairy Park, with its series of striking medieval castles depicting centuries-old folklore traditions against the Anakie landscape.
In the first days of construction, scaffolding for some of the monstrous structures comprised several 44-gallon drums.
As for a building permit to construct a theme park, processes were a little looser in those days.
“What permit?” Helmut asks.
Helmut would challenge planning staff for council regulations on building the Seven Dwarfs.
They’d shrug their shoulders in response.
The figurines, originally made in clay, later sometimes concrete, heralded Fairy Park’s famous but then
unheard-of animated displays.
But not always without a hitch.
“You do it with patience,” Helmut sighs, “especially if you don’t succeed, which we first didn’t making figures out of clay, sticking them in a kiln and heating them.
“All we heard was bang, bang, bang, then shatter, shatter, shatter.”
A few times the family overslept and cooked the gnomes to a crisp.
But when more than 5000 visitors showed up at the gates in the first week, they knew the effort was worth the trouble.
The biggest concern then was gathering a makeshift float at the gate.
“We just had enough change in the kitty to serve the first car or two,” Helmut admits.
“They were coming from as far as Bendigo – they’re still coming from Bendigo and some haven’t even got here yet.”
Fairy Park hosted the original Easter egg hunt, moving the concept from small backyards to the one large outcrop at Anakie.
The family imported dye from Germany and spent a few days dipping and hand-colouring real, not chocolate, eggs.
The tradition will return this Easter to commemorate the park’s 50th year.
Helmut admits the egg hunt had turned into a shambles, forcing the family to cancel it in the early 1990s.
“People were just getting too greedy,” he deadpans.
Helmut’s mood changes and his chest swells when he proclaims that Fairy Park is only few years younger than Disneyland.
The little Anakie theme park also claims to be the oldest in Australia.
“We don’t know of any other and no one else has come forward,” Helmut says.
However, a trip to Euro Disney World in France left the unassuming Helmut “very impressed”, although putting his inspiration into practice at the park might be out of reach.
“I came back with ideas but Disney has the money to build it,” he grins.