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Natural State News
July/August 2010
Shakespeare Festival
The million dollar Australian Shakespeare Festival (ASF), a major new Australian multi-arts festival, will have its inaugural season in Hobart from 9-29 August 2010. The three-week festival includes opera, revue, film, music and fringe performances.
Professor Kevin Purcell, the Director of the Conservatorium of Music at the University of Tasmania, is the festival’s executive producer. “The most exciting thing about the Shakespeare Festival for me is that it’s the only multi-arts category Shakespeare Festival in the world. There are no other Shakespeare festivals like it,” he says.
Some of the festival’s many highlights will include the first all-professional production in Australia of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ comic opera, Sir John in Love (based on The Merry Wives of Windsor) and Christopher Luscombe and Malcolm McKee’s comic paean to the Bard, The Shakespeare Revue.
If you’re still scarred from reading Shakespeare at high school this diversity can help the healing. “The festival allows people to get into Shakespeare from all different points. It’s very much designed to allow the community to find the type of Shakespeare experience that makes them feel comfortable and potentially excites them into coming to performances,” says professor Purcell.
At this diverse festival children and adults can find out how Shakespeare informs their lives. “And Shakespeare does inform people’s lives,” says Professor Purcell. “He is the greatest writer in the last 400 years without doubt. Every one of Shakespeare’s tales tells a story about human frailties and universal themes and that’s why everywhere in the world he is popular. In the US alone there are over 200 Shakespeare festivals. In Australia we don’t [until now] have one single national Shakespeare festival,” notes the professor.
www.australianshakespearefestival.com.au and www.luminatasmania.com
Junction Arts Festival
This is another new winter arts festival. It will be held in Launceston in August. From theatre and dance to opera, visual arts and writing some 47 arts events will by turns be engaging, fun and mostly free.
The Festival Club will be housed in a big top in the city centre and be the festival hub. Around it and in places nearby writers will create love letters in cafes, musicians will roam the mall in rickshaws, dancers will perform in shop fronts and well-known buildings will be drenched in light. The festival will turn hotel rooms into art galleries and church halls into blogging hubs. The festival will include a program of workshops and artists’ talks.
www.junction2010.com and www.luminatasmania.com
World Heritage Announcement
The Australian Convict Sites is the title of a submission made to the World Heritage Centre in 2008. This nomination for World Heritage listing comprises 11 convict sites across Australia. Five of them — Brickendon-Woolmers estates; Darlington Probation Station on Maria Island; Cascades Female Factory; Port Arthur Historic Site and the Coal Mines Historic Site on the Tasman Peninsula — are from Tasmania.
The outcome of the nomination will be known when the World Heritage committee confers late next month (July) in Brazil.
“Woolmers and Brickendon were included in the nomination because of their representation of the assignment period of convictism,” says Louise Archer, part of the family that owns the Brickendon Estate (circa 1824), the only private entry among the Australian nominations.
Assignment was by far the most common experience for convicts (some 80 per cent of all convict labour to Tasmania was assigned to work), the system providing labour essential to the economic growth of the Australian colonies.
The neighbouring estates of Brickendon and Woolmers are just a few minutes’ drive from Longford. Brickendon has some 20 convict-built buildings (both timber and brick) as well as convict built roadways over the current 420 hectare estate. Its homestead is a colonial Georgian country house. “The two properties had the second largest number of convicts go through them over the period of assignment,” Archer says.
The World Heritage imprimatur isn’t vital to Brickendon’s fortunes. “[But] it makes people realise it is a very rare story throughout the world,” Archer says. The Archers have long known Brickendon is special. But it [World Heritage inclusion] will be fabulous,” Archer says. “It obviously opens Brickendon to being recognised internationally.”
A 2.5km walk between the estates of Woolmers and Brickendon is currently being created. The track will not be finished until the spring. Which is a good thing really. There should be just enough time to put up the WHA signage.
Entry to Brickendon costs $12 for adults, $11 concession and $4.50 for children
Visit www.brickendon.com.au
Frenchman’s Truffles
The new Tasmanian Truffles season began in June and lasts until mid-September. The first truffle farm in Australia is near to Glencoe Rural Retreat, a converted farm house run by French-born couple Remi and Ginette Bancal.
Stay at Glencoe on a Sunday night and, as part of the truffle-theme package (available Sunday nights only) Remi will cook up a three course truffle-themed dinner based on traditional French comfort food from Provence. It will be served up in Glencoe’s intimate dining room.
On the Monday morning guests will visit a Deloraine truffle farm where, with help from an artfully trained dog, they will dig up truffles.
The truffle experience — one night accommodation at Glencoe Rural Retreat, the tour and the three course truffle-infused dinner — costs $545 per couple. The Glencoe dining room holds 12 people and there are just four Provence-themed bedrooms at the property: it wouldn't take much effort for a few friends to book the place out.
If you’ll be staying elsewhere in Tassie during truffle season you can visit Glencoe for the three course dinner – if there is room.
www.glencoeruralretreat.com.au
For more information on Tassie truffles: Tim Terry (03) 6363 6194.
Voices from the Grave
The first two booklets in a Heritage Series which captures the rich history and significant themes and stories of the colonial history of Tassie’s Midlands (the Heritage Highway region) were launched in 2008.
An audio companion to Voices from the Graves, one of the booklets, was launched in May (2010). Based in the Christ Church graveyard in Longford it tells the stories, in first person, of two of the people interred.
The audio is a fine complement to the read. As well as the ‘voices from the grave’ it features actors from the Mudlark Theatre (an independent theatre company based in Launceston) and original compositions from guitarist Chris Jacobson. The Chordwainers — members of this band play distinctive leather instruments — also feature.
The CDs cost $8. Voices from the Grave will also be available for download. For information on where to get a hold of the CD and the booklets: www.heritagehighway.com.au
Wildlife Refuge Experience
Bonorong Wildlife Park launched a Tasmanian Wildlife Refuge experience in June. Visitors who sign up for this tour participate in daily health checks and observations of a variety of native animals; to go inside the enclosures and see what is involved with day to day native animal husbandry; an extensive session on Tasmanian devils including the opportunity to hand feed them and learning about orphaned and injured wildlife, first response medical attention, and orphan raising.
Greg Irons, 26 years old, owns the park. His passion for animal rehabilitation and releasing animals back into the wild runs to some 19 years. His CV dates back to when he was just seven years old and, on his first visit to Bonorong Wildlife Park (which was established in 1981), told his mum he would own the park one day.
The new four hour tour costs $349 for adults and $79 for children. Bookings are essential. Bonorong is just 30-minutes’ drive from Hobart and the park is open all year.
www.bonorong.com.au and (03) 6268 1184
Pats on the Back
The Maria Island Walk won Best Eco Adventure at the Australian Gourmet Traveller 2010 Travel Awards. Only two other operators, including Orion Expedition Cruises, have won as many times as The Maria Island Walk.
Steve Cumper at Cygnet’s renowned The Red Velvet Lounge has won the Australian Country Chef of the Year award (run by Australian Country Style magazine) in 2010.
Media Contact:
Sonia Rendigs at Media Moguls: (03) 9836 2167
sonia@mediamoguls.com.au
Download: High-resolution images from Tourism Tasmania's Visual Library.
Check the Events Tasmania website for upcoming events:
www.eventstasmania.com
For further information:
travelmedia.tourismtasmania.com.au
www.discovertasmania.com