Charles Wooley in 60 Minutes mode …
I can write with impunity about my old hometown of Launceston in the safe knowledge that these words will never be read, north of Ross.
Up there they take the “Examiner” just as they drink a different beer. The Cascade-Boags line divides our state, as in the United States the Mason-Dixon line separates the one time Unionist states of the North from the Confederacy states of the South.
In the USA, I always love to drive south, down into ‘Dixie’. I like the abrupt changes in both landscape and culture. Distinct differences in architecture, food, the people and the way they speak, make the American South another country.
Taking the two small boys up to the north of our own state during the recent school holidays, I didn’t expect them to notice any such marked changes, but when I was their age, in early high school, Launceston was the capital of my universe and I was keen to see it again through their eyes.
In the heart of town, one of them declared, “It’s like a much bigger Glenorchy.”
The other wondered, “Why are there so many people with tattoos and beanies?”
Out of the mouths of babes, you might think. Of course in our overly sensitive world, reported baldly like that, such innocent ruminations might even give offence though none was intended. But as I said, these words won’t travel north of the Cascade-Boags Line, so unless the good folk of Glenorchy are offended by the comparison, no harm is done.
I encouraged the kids to look up from the road level, above the street awnings to the buildings themselves. The elegance of Launceston’s architecture struck them.
“That’s cool.”
“It could be a small Melbourne.”
“Better.”
At my kids’ age, I think, I too would have got it, had anyone bothered to tell me to look up. But nobody did and it wasn’t until much later that I realised that my hometown was the nation’s best example of what is called ‘Regency’ architecture.
From 1800 to 1830, between the reign of ‘mad king George’ and the grand sobriety of the Victorian style, there flourished a brief period of ornate but restrained splendor also known as “Greek Revival.”
Hellenic columns mixed with bow windows and white-painted stucco facades, often incorporated into terraces and elegant crescents. It was a strange confection owing more to imagination than actual history, but it really works, and even my kids can see that. Historically, Sydney was too early and Melbourne was too late but Launceston has it in abundance.
Sadly my old town appears, to me at least, to be in a state of decline.
Shop fronts beneath those golden era buildings in the main street now house discount traders offering cheap deals. “Spend $100 and receive a $20 Gift Voucher.” This, in Brisbane Street, where I remember classy traders like Ludbrooks, a quality drapers, where my first suit was purchased.
But by far my childhood favourite was the smart, back then hi-tech, Duncan’s Shoe Shop where we kids could mount a pedestal and insert a foot into an X ray machine and for hours on end, peer through a periscope to watch our toe bones wiggle in an eerie green light.
Long before Occupational Health and Safety, I remember us being shooed away by sales staff, only when genuine purchasers wished to irradiate themselves using this astounding new technology to see if their shoe was a good fit.
“Launceston”, I proudly told my boys, “has always been at the forefront of science.”
I showed them Prince’s Square where there is a bronze statue of a top-hatted fellow with mutton-chop whiskers, the surgeon William Pugh. He pioneered the use of anesthetics to perform operations as early as 1847.
Then I took them over the Alexandra Suspension Bridge on the Cataract Gorge to consider the Duck Reach Power Station on the South Esk River, which in 1895 produced electricity to illuminate the streets of Launceston.
It was an Australian first I told them, but the boys were more interested in leaping from side to side on that dizzying suspension bridge, as I had done at their age, to set the thing violently rocking and terrify the other visitors.
I joined them briefly, only to earn a disapproving glare from an elderly Chinese tourist. She clearly thought a man of my age should know better … and she was right.
A visit to their cousins, in the monkey enclosure at City Park, followed by dinner at the Metz, a trendy eatery in St John Street and then breakfast at The Elia Café up the top end of Charles Street was more than enough to win my boys’ seal of approval.
For myself, my old hometown always leaves me with the sad feeling that here is a place whose best times are behind it.
Launceston is one of the nation’s worst hotspots of generational unemployment and it certainly shows in the main street.
Yet it has so much to offer, not just in the city but also in its surrounding environment.
Somehow Launceston hasn’t risen to the challenge in the way that Hobart has.
Maybe it needs a David Walsh or a Simon Currant to work some wonders and ensure that my old home gets a bit more attention.
I spend a lot of time in Sydney and Melbourne where everyone is talking about what a wonderful place is Hobart. I never disagree but I do suggest they also travel only two hours north, across the Cascade-Boags line.
I often joke that Launceston is a great place to have come from. But in truth it’s also well worth a second look …
First published in Mercury’s TasWeekend
• Elizabeth Viney in Comments: Charles, you yourself reported that your good mate Simon Currant has already said: “We have to get over this heritage bullshit”. Simon Currant’s ‘wonders’ may not be what Launceston needs.
