Kipli Paywuta Lumi: Into the Tasmanian Bush with MONA FOMA

On this trip I’m being hosted by Tourism Tasmania and MONA FOMA.

I’m in Launceston, Tasmania, for a few days, taking part in the MONA FOMA festival and enjoying various arts and food highlights of the city and the region.

Last night I had one of the more interesting cultural experiences I’d ever experienced, taking part in the Kipli Paywuta Lumi event.

A celebration of the culture of Tasmania’s Aboriginal people - known as Palawa - it saw us first being transported in a bus up to the heights of the forest outside Launceston. Dropped off in a car park on the edge of the bush, we were asked to walk quietly through the trees, following the path marked by ochre-painted trunks.

It took about fifteen minutes up and down slopes to reach our destination. I suppose the point of walking in silence was to let the bush calm us down, to help us make the transition from city buzz to nature’s slower rhythms.

On arrival at the campsite we saw this - a ‘bush hut’ constructed in the tradition once used by the local Indigenous people, though this version was larger than those and employed modern materials.

Sitting within on wallaby and possum skins, we were given a Welcome to Country in the Palawa language, which has been undergoing a revival in recent years. With the lowering sun shining onto the outside of the hut, it was an atmospheric setting for the welcome.  

We moved to a nearby campfire where an interesting array of traditional foodstuffs was cooking - possum, muttonbird and wallaby among them. We were served oysters here as we heard more about the project, and from shells drank beverages flavoured with native herbs such as pepperberry.

Back in the tent, our food was served on bark onto beds of ferns, and we ate in the traditional way - using our fingers! First up was fish (pinungana in the local language), flathead in this case. Very tasty, with a hint of lemon from the spices used.

I’ll spare you the photos of what the fish and other food looked like when we had finished with it! It was a great experience sharing food this way; among our groups of five or six, it promoted discussion and the hut was soon filled with sociable talk. The event had promised “a moment of mid-festival calm”, and it delivered. 

As the event was delivered by Palawa people in partnership with others, and drew deeply on Tasmanian Aboriginal traditions, it helped keep that culture alive and reinterpreted for the present day. I was very pleased to be a part of it - at school as a kid I was told that Tasmania’s Indigenous people had died out, and I couldn’t be more delighted to experience the living contradiction of that lie.

Dropped back at the Festival Hub in Launceston, I stepped inside and partook of another drink involving Tasmanian native ingredients - proof that MONA FOMA can embrace all traditions.

The Kipli Paywuta Lumi event is sold out, but you can visit the campsite during the day; and find out more about this and other events at the MONA FOMA website  MONA FOMA continues to Monday 20 January 2020.

Historic Launceston by App

I'm in Launceston, Tasmania, for the first time in six years, being hosted by the Launceston City Council as I research a story about cider for a major newspaper.

While here, I also decided to test out the city's new Launceston Heritage Trail: Cameron Street iPhone/iPad app.

Because Launceston is Australia's third-oldest city, it has a splendid array of Georgian and Victorian facades which have somehow escaped the march of progress.

There's a particularly good selection of these along Cameron Street in the city's heart (see screenshot at right), so the app focuses on that thoroughfare.

The great advantage of an app over the traditional printed tour brochure is the wealth of information you can squeeze in, and the flexibility with which it can be presented.

The cleverest element of this Heritage Trail app is its juxtaposition of then-and-now photos of the buildings being highlighted. So an on-screen image of the current Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (1887) dissolved into this:

... and looking up from the screen, I could see this:

The journey east along Cameron revealed a nicely diverse collection of colonial buildings, from elegant public institutions to gritty industrial edifices. I won't add any more screenshots, but here are some of the structures featured along the route.

Next after the gallery was the local Supreme Court building. It had started life in the 1870s as Struan House, the home of a prosperous businessman, then later became a hospital before being incorporated into the court complex (it's the building on the left):

You may notice that I was walking along Cameron Street on a wet afternoon. As I progressed further east and the drizzle increased, I felt ever more strongly that I was walking the streets of a provincial market town somewhere in England, rather than Australia.

But onward to Macquarie House, an attractive 1830s warehouse which had somehow survived demolition even though it's located right on the city's Civic Square:

A block further east I found two significant public buildings. First, the 1867 Town Hall:

... and across the street, the clock tower of the 1890 Post Office. The tower, however, dates from 1910. Due to penny-pinching, the original construction budget didn't include enough cash for a clock. Twenty years of pressure from locals finally led to its addition:

A block further on was Trinity Church, a bulky red-brick place of worship which was opened in 1902 but not completely built until 1986:

And nearby, the former Cornwall Hotel, now known as the Batman Fawkner Inn. This old pub belonged to John Pascoe Fawkner, and it was within its walls that Fawkner and John Batman independently planned to sail across Bass Strait and found the settlement which became Melbourne:

Two more buildings finished the app's collection - the excellent 1895 Crown Mill, lit by the new-fangled electricity to which Launceston had access:

 

... and near the corner of Cameron and Tamar Streets, the grand 1891 Albert Hall, built for an international exhibition and still in use as a performing arts venue:

There was one noticeable flaw in the app's layout, especially when standing on a cold wet street trying to shield the iPhone from rain.

The explanatory text for each sight is broken into a short "Story" section and a long "Further Reading" section.

However, the short intro tends to be the start of an essay, rather than the expected pithy overview of a building and its significance. I often had to scroll through a fair bit of the "Further Reading" section to discover basic facts about when a place was built, for example.

The app is also very focused on great civic buildings. As I walked along the route I also spotted some interesting but less grand commercial buildings I would've liked to learn more about.

On the positive side, the fade from old to new photos is an excellent idea and helps orientate the user, especially when the building has undergone some expansion over the years (as you can see in the images of the art gallery above).

Also, the extended text, offering a history of each building and its owners, would be an interesting read before or after the tour.

Overall I enjoyed the experience, and it was good to walk the route in my own time. The new Heritage Trails app is a great way to add context to Launceston's visual appeal.

Download the Launceston Heritage Trail: Cameron Street iOS app free at this link (NB it doesn't appear to be available for Android devices yet).

Disclosure time: On this trip I was hosted by the Launceston City Council.