Huon Valley Guessing Games Mayor Robert Armstrong, above, often laments the prevalence of vandalism in the valley, presumably of the unofficial kind, like street-tree abuse, graffiti and littering of the highways and byways. Now, at huge waste of public money, I think an example of officially sanctioned vandalism is about to begin in Cygnet.
Last week, Huon Valley Council placed notices in the Huon Valley News and Cygnet Classifieds announcing the closure, from June 25, of the Loongana Park toilet block “to enable the construction of the new public toilets”.
The quaint, unobtrusive four decades-old building — adorned on its four walls in the early 1990s with the artistry of students of the St James and Cygnet primary schools — is to be demolished to make way for a largely synthetic ‘Modwood’ structure that, in its park setting, will loom large and ugly over Mary Street, the town’s main thoroughfare.
On council’s own admission, about $100,000 would have refurbished the existing block to the required health and safety standards. The official estimate of replacing it with a new one has soared to $230,000. More likely, council will end up spending more than a quarter of a million dollars.
So council, with its long-held penchant for destroying built and natural heritage icons, and for totally ignoring popular pleas for the preservation of elements that give the Huon Valley its unique charm (especially when the campaigns appear to be spearheaded by newcomers to the valley), is about to destroy yet another of those little bits of architecture that, in their entirety, help make the valley a drawcard for tourist travellers who want to enjoy what is now, sadly, becoming a fading glimpse of the way things were.
Mayor Armstrong’s ruling group of six have never wavered in their determination to demolish the Loongana Park toilets, even in the face of more than 700 signatures (500-plus of which came from valley residents, mostly from the Cygnet area) on a petition appealing to council to renovate the present building.
It was the same with the football clubrooms at Franklin a few years back when — in a dawn attack and bugger-the-possibility-of-asbestos-flying-around — contractors, under council orders, set their bulldozers to work erasing an economically and culturally valuable township icon that was as solid and durable as it was when it was built in the mid-1900s ( Here: Outrage at Franklin and, Death in the Morning and Questions Huon Valley Council must answer )
That act of wanton vandalism took place at the very moment a hugely popular petition to save the building was being gathered. By afternoon, the site was a gravelled wasteland. And, apart from a picnic bench, nothing has been done with the site since.
The old Judbury community hall, redolent of a bygone era, was another victim of a demolition squad. Cygnet has lost iconic peppermint gums for no good reason: one, recently, adjacent to the T-junction at the southern end of Mary Street; the other a few years ago outside the library.
Dover’s old school was saved only as a result of stern community resistance. And even Franklin’s Palais Theatre was in council sights as a demolition target in the late 1990s. That planned crime, fortunately, was headed off by huge community resistance, a campaign that was closely followed by massive local voluntary work to restore the building to its former glory. What would Franklin have been today without its glorious Palais!
Now the barbarians are about to molest their fiefdom yet again. Despite enthusiastic support for the huge petition to save the old toilet block, raised by a caring Cygnet area resident, Lester Spinaze, there’s no stomach for overt popular local resistance to the implacable stance of Huon Valley Council. Apathy rules despite widespread mumbled grumblings about council’s dictatorial attitude, especially towards certain sections of the valley population.
For posterity’s sake, Tasmanian Times offers this portfolio of images of the latest building to face the force of the local government’s wreckers. — Bob Hawkins
First published: 2012-06-26 04:56 AM
