July. August 103A depleting population and rock-bottom real estate prices
mean tended cottages with blooming gardens adjoin dilapidated
homes not worth renovating and abandoned shacks barely breath-
ing. It’s almost impossible to come away from Queenstown not
fantasising about buying a fixer-upper with wooden f loorboards
and pressed-tin ceilings for $50,000.
Tassie’s West Coast is known to get under the skin. “[It] attracts
people who think differently, do things differently and live their
lives differently,” says Townsville-born Vikki Iwanicki who
returned to Australia looking for community, after many years
in New York City. Now the owners of Penghana – originally
built as a residence for Mount Lyell’s General Manager – Vikki
and her family relocated from northern New South Wales. Friends
thought they were crazy moving to a remote Tasmanian town
to run a high-end B&B...until those friends visited.
Locals hope artists Helena Demczuk and Glover Prize-winning
Raymond Arnold stay because they contribute artistically,
culturally and socially. The couple’s home, LARQ, a non-profit
studio and gallery, is a converted schoolhouse with a striking
exterior in a part of Hunter Street that’s been developing into an
artists’ enclave.
Queenstown’s 1930s former grand talkie theatre, The Paragon,
has been revived by Anthony Coulson and partner Joy Chappell.
Its 2019 program of mainly contemporary music and classic
films brings non-pub nightlife to Queenie. Joy is also respon-
sible for Mt Lyell Anchorage accommodation. She’s lived
throughout Australia but says “as soon as you come over the
hill and there’s Mt Owen in the distance, it’s that overwhelm-
ing feeling of coming home”.
What about the town’s rough reputation? Like the polluted
Queen River draining into the healthier King at the conf luence
south of town, it’s being diluted. Handlebar-moustached Danny
sells soft-serve ice-creams from a bright pink trailer he built
and decorated himself. Queenstown’s tiny corner Caltex has
an extensive jiggler doll window display labelled “Bob’s col-
lection”. Prospector Rory Wray-McCann exhibits his mineral
collections as artworks. The heritage-listed gravel oval now has
more sand than rock in the mix. When Anthony came out as
a greenie at heart, he soon discovered he wasn’t the only one.Y
ES, QUEENSTOWN IS still haunted by its past, judged for
its appearance and feels pressure to redefine itself.
Since 2016 a biennial visual and performing arts festi-
val, The Unconformity, has been a key vehicle for that, inviting
artists to “mine the bones” of Queenstown’s past by creating
site-specific works. “We wanted something that’s not shying
away from the brutality of what’s happened here,” says Lea, the
festival’s graphic designer, “because its brutal beauty and the
conf lict between industrial devastation and the World Heritage
area five minutes away is what draws artists.”
For 2018, 226 people from Australia and around the world
applied for an Unconformity artist-in-residence placement.
A Welcome to Country by the local Aboriginal community
opened the mid-October weekend event. On Saturday night,
festival-goers, including Hobartians and Queenie’s local footy
team, danced together in The Paragon. The festival’s 30-some-
thing artistic director, Travis Tiddy – a fifth-generation West
Coaster with his life in Hobart and heart in Queenstown – says
that more than three-quarters of people surveyed who attended
the first Unconformity said it changed their perception.
“There’s always been a very strong sense of pride in the
community,” Lea says “It was only people outside who didn’t
understand that.” AG“There’s always
been a very strong
sense of pride in
the community.”
The confluence of the
King and Queen rivers.Stepping into The Paragon
Theatre’s restored interior is a
breathtaking experience.