Sunday, 3 June 2007
So, How come they’re filming this in Bowen?
Disclaimer
Parts of the following entry may be based on hearsay or on inaccurate recollections of conversations over a period of twenty-three years where alcohol may or may not have been consumed.
The standard version of the Baz Comes To Bowen story is pretty straightforward. It goes something like this:
In the course of his travels around Australia in search of a wharf that could be used in some sequences of the film, Baz Luhrmann visited Bowen, and, in the process of buying lunch became interested in the historical photographs on the wall of Jochheim’s Pie Shop. Following a conversation with Merle Jochheim, a descendant of Captain Sinclair, who discovered Port Denison, Baz was sufficiently interested to conduct a further investigation and eventually decided to use the area around the Bowen Jettyf to shoot a substantial part of the movie.
Anyone who wanted to go into a little more detail might possibly consider the role of Bowen’s high-profile and media-savvy Mayor, Mike Brunker, in the process.
When the movie Volunteers were called together for an orientation session, we were told that the set was the largest outdoor on-location set ever used in Australia, and obviously the size of the set that could be built at the Front Beach was a major consideration in the decision to film Australia here in Bowen.
There’s about three hectares on the site, and, as I’ve previously mentioned, one of the most common questions from out-of-town visitors during the first week of filming has been What was there before?
Which brings us to the infamous Hole In The Ground.
Quite simply, as far as I can see, if there had been any sort of major construction on the site, the movie would not have been filmed in Bowen at all.
When I arrived in town in 1984, the area across the road from the Grand View was railway land. The corner opposite the hotel was occupied by the Railways Institute Hall and most of the rest of the block was occupied by a freight depot and goods yards, a legacy of the days when Bowen was a working port.
In the process of rationalising rail services, in the nineties those buildings were removed, and various suggestions about the future use of prime beach front land were floated. There was a suggestion to relocate the RSL Club to the site and various schemes involving cultural centres or residential developments appeared in the pages of the Bowen Independent, usually sinking without trace shortly thereafter.
That sort of thing is hardly news to anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with the history of the town. The influence of nay-sayers and pessimists in Bowen's past goes at least as far back as Robert Towns’ proposal to establish a boiling down works to render aging and uneconomic sheep into tallow.
When the citizens of the infant settlement rejected the scheme, Towns and his partners found an alternative site some two hundred kilometres north of here and named the new settlement Townsville.
Over the years since then, there have been any number of major developments floated, from major industrial projects like steelworks and alumina refineries, to plants to process the area’s agricultural produce, to detention centres for illegal immigrants.
At one stage there was even a proposal to relocate the golf club to another site and place a large residential development on the prime beach front real estate occupied by the golf course. And, after much to-ing and fro-ing over the Magazine Creek mangroves, a marina development got as far as a substantial hole in the ground before coming to a grinding halt.
There were, of course, exceptions to the rule. My arrival in town coincided with the winding down of the construction of the export coal-handling terminal at Abbot Point, which had brought a short-term boom to the town, and it seemed to a casual observer such as myself that the frequent cries of Comalco is coming through the rest of the eighties were based as much on a desire to maintain inflated property values as on any actual likelihood of somebody developing an alumina refinery.
And every time the prospect was being touted there seemed to be an equally strong counter current comprising roughly equal parts of It’ll never happen and We like our little town the way it is, thank you very much.
Finally, in the late nineties, the place hit pretty close to rock bottom when the Merinda meatworks closed. While that was a disaster in the short term, a couple of positive developments came out of it.
By 2000 research had identified a number of projects around the shire which would provide a basis for future growth, and, for some reason, an outside developer with capital arrived in town.
His first project was a shopping complex close to the existing commercial centre, a development which left many locals shaking their heads and expressing the usual opinion - It’ll never work.
Based on previous experience, the closure of the meatworks and the number of vacant shops in the commercial centre, their scepticism was probably justified, and there was more than one I told you so when several of the shops in the complex remained vacant for some time after construction had been completed.
However, while this was happening, other properties around town were being acquired and other projects floated. The most ambitious of them was a condominium-style apartment block, motel and retail complex to be located on the Front Beach across the road from the Grand View.
Given its history as an industrial site, before any development would be allowed to proceed the ground needed to be cleaned up. There were issues regarding possible contamination of the waters of Port Denison, so it wasn’t just a matter of gaining approval from Bowen Shire Council. Various other government agencies needed to be satisfied, and, anyone with a nodding acquaintance with processes involving bureaucracy knows that those processes don’t happen overnight.
And while those processes are in progress, it’s happening, more or less behind closed doors,away from the eyes of the general public.
While the contaminated soil was being removed removed and preparatory excavations made, potential buyers were supposed to be queuing up to buy off the plan. In the end, although the preliminaries were more or less out of the way, the number of potential customers fell short of the number needed to finance the first stage of construction, so the project lapsed and we were left with the hole in the ground.
In hindsight, that’s just as well, because while the site was widely regarded as an eyesore, if it had been developed in any way Mr Luhrmann would probably have been making his movie somewhere else.
Ironic, isn’t it? Looking at the way events unfolded, it’s more than likely that the We like our little town the way it is, thank you very much crowd played a substantial role in preventing that particular project from coming to fruition, and, at the same time created a situation where their nice little town will never be the same again....
So there are a whole number of factors that happened to coincide to bring the movie to town.
As the old saying goes, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.
Although it was a disaster at the time, without the closure of the meatworks, we wouldn’t have seen local business community get its act together and go out looking for projects that would kick things along.
In the wake of the closure, the search for people who were willing to commit money to projects in the town meant that we had outside capital coming in at a time when property prices were down, so one guy with a bit of vision was able to buy up several major sites around town.
Of course, in hindsight, he probably got them at bargain basement prices, but at least the guy was willing to spend the money.
If the prices had been a little higher, he mightn’t have been able to buy so much, and he wouldn’t have ended up with the same number of possible projects.
That’s significant because if he’d concentrated his capital to put all his eggs in one basket the basket would more than likely have been located very close to the Front Beach.
As it turned out, he ended up with a number of areas he could develop, didn’t have to tackle them in any specific order and could afford to put a fence around the hole in the ground and wait.
If the site had been sold to anyone else, we would more than likely have seen some sort of development there by now, and, regardless of what anyone might suggest to the contrary, the whole Bowenwood thing wouldn’t have happened.
So, while the standard version of events gives a lot of credit where credit is due, let’s not forget that the story behind the filming of Australia ties up a lot of threads that weave their way through Bowen’s history.
And hopefully, once the cameras have stopped rolling, the tents have been dismantled, and the movie site has been cleared, we’ll be looking to a more positive future, not returning to the mindset that has held the town back in the past.
