As the much-loved replica of Tasmania’s most historic ship, the Lady Nelson, struggles to financially stay afloat and battles for public recognition, a land-locked South Australian city has spent millions honouring the vessel. Hobart journalist BRANDT TEALE found out why.
TASMANIA’S iconic tallship, the Lady Nelson, now has its own lavish, multi-million-dollar tourism centre _ in South Australia.
The replica vessel cost Tasmanian corporate and private donors and taxpayers nearly $1 million plus countless volunteered hours to build in the mid-1980s. But it is the rural SA city of Mt Gambier, about 30km from the coast, which is home to an impressive, hi-tech development that honours the ship.
Located near the Victorian border on the busy Highway One between Melbourne and Adelaide, the Lady Nelson Visitor and Discovery Centre attracts tens of thousands of tourists each year.
They are treated to an inspection of the centre’s own life-size replica of the 1799-built brig, tour an impressive walk-through interpretive display of the area’s history and then there’s the obligatory souvenir shop, which does a roaring trade.
With business booming, centre staff are amazed that Tasmania has not honoured the ship in a similar way and cashed-in on extra tourism dollars.
“The only difference between your Lady Nelson and ours is that yours floats and ours doesn’t,” centre staff member Denise Richardson said.
“We get so much interest from Tasmanians who are travelling and can’t believe their eyes when they drive down the highway and see the Lady Nelson sitting here in all its glory.”
Another staff member, Leonie Davis, said: “We publicly honour the ship in a huge way. “Your working Lady Nelson actually played a big part in Mt Gambier’s bicententary celebrations in 2000, sailing down the coast and marking the occasion of when the original ship was used to chart our coastline, and its captain James Grant saw our mountains in the distance and named one Mt Gambier.”
The visitor centre’s land-locked, fully rigged ship is so imposing next to the main highway, travellers can’t miss it.
And neither can the locals, who have taken it to heart and are justifiably proud of its nearby spacious, well-appointed discovery centre.
However, despite the vessel’s historic importance to Tasmania, there is no notable formal, public acknowledgement of the ship in this state _ just brief recreational trips occasionally advertised on a dockside billboard, some brochures snf s museum display.
In 1983, the Tasmanian Sail Training Association began building its replica, launched at Woodbridge in November 1987 and now a familiar sight on Hobart’s Derwent River under the operation of dedicated volunteers.
The association does not have the funds to build any type of visitor centre for the Lady Nelson, let alone one on the vast scale of Mt Gambier’s tourist attraction.
Association staff member Stephen Long recently said: “It costs a hell of a lot of money just to keep it sailing. Unless we have a generous benefactor to supply substantial funds, I can’t see any such visitor centre for the ship being built any time in the foreseeable future.”
The original HMS Lady Nelson was the first ship to enter Victoria’s Port Phillip Heads, in February 1802, and the following year arrived in the Derwent River to establish Van Diemen’s Land’s first settlement, at Risdon Cove, on the Derwent River.
In 1804, it helped move the settlement across the river to Sullivans Cove, where Hobart now stands. It also transported settlers to Tasmania from Norfolk Island between 1807 and 1812.
The ship was destroyed in 1824 when it called at the island of Babar, near Timor, after a supply trip to Melville Island in the Northern Territory. The crew was murdered by the indigenous islanders and the ship was run ashore and burnt.
Pictures and article: BRANDT TEALE
