Tasmania Awaits

Bottoms up: Wineglass Bay on the Freycinet Peninsula. ven by Australian standards, Tasmania feels strange and remote. Lost at the conti - nent’s southeastern tip—quite literally, down under—the island is a hauntingly beautiful expanse of gnarled forests and rugged mountains, where exotic flora and fauna have thrived in windswept isolation. Its colonial history verges on the gothic. As if the Australian penal colonies weren’t harsh enough, the British settled Tasmania in 1803 as a holding pen for its worst criminals—a gulag with - in the Antipodean gulag, whose convict work camps were renowned for their cruelty. By the 1820s, settlers were embarking on a brutal frontier war with the Tasmanian Aborigines, whose last members were rounded up and removed to a smaller island, Flinders, where they died of disease and despair in one of the most shameful chapters in British history. Since then, Tasmania has stubbornly remained the least developed and least populated state in Australia, enduring unkind jokes among mainlanders, who often regard it as a refuge of hillbillies and yokels on a par with the stereo- Still, none of these fashionable upgrades quite prepared typed Appalachian here. Its main attraction for visitors has mainland Australians for MONA , the Museum of Old and New been its savage natural beauty, luring adventure travelers to Art, a radically innovative institution that opened on the raft its wild rivers and hike the succulent expanses of tem - banks of the Derwent River in January 2011. One of the largest perate rainforest in its national parks. private museums in the Southern Hemisphere—and without In recent years, however, Tasmania has begun to enter a sur - doubt the most provocative— MONA has suddenly vaulted prising new era, as the former backwater has developed a Tasmania onto the international cultural map. Its $100 mil - fiercely independent cultural scene. Author Richard Flanagan lion private collection focuses heavily on themes of sex and , from the city of Hobart, has hit the New York Times best -sell - death, and is presented in a uniquely creative setting, a pur - er list with novels such as Gould’s Book of Fish and Wanting . pose-built $75 million edifice that challenges our preconceived Post modern architecture has flourished, notions of what an art museum with a string of award-winning eco- should be. There are none of the tra - lodges poised in wilderness areas. Trav - ditional “white cube” gallery spaces. elers can now spend two days hiking Instead, labyrinthine passageways and along a deserted coastline to the Bay Escher-like stairways connect three of Fires Lodge, a sleek designer re - underground levels. There aren’t even treat perched on a remote headland labels on the artworks. Visitors are and surrounded by wild bush. An - each given an iPod Touch that per - other spectacular lodge, called Saf - mits random exploration; the device fire, opened two year s ago by the Fr - tracks your location and provides eycinet Peninsula; its main building is written commentaries, including designed in a flowing form that poems and personal meditations. No evokes the pattern of the waves, with audio commentary is provided; instead, enormous picture windows facing a the “O” plays appropriate music. string of raw mountains called the Some artworks with religious and Hazards. The island’s pristine environ - sexual content have caused controversy ment has attracted armies of gourmet food producers, and it elsewhere, which has helped make MONA hugely success - now exports everything from organic wagyu beef to abalone, ful. In its first year it received 389,000 visitors, far outstrip - wild duck, brie, oysters, goat cheese, truffles and saffron. The ping staff predictions and making it Tasmania’s biggest Tamar Valley in the north is producing some of Australia’s tourist attraction. The museum has been a boon for the most prized wines. And there is a general obsession with all fragile local economy—officials talk of the “ MONA Effect” things healthful. In fact, Tasmania can sometimes verge on the same way Spaniards do of the “Bilbao Effect”—and has Portlandia, where every body product seems to be made from been embraced by Tasmanians, who refer to it as “our an elaborate home grown concoction such as lemon eucalyp - MONA .” Its success has caught the eye of cognoscenti from tus with wild bush passion fruit. New York, Tokyo and London, and stolen the thunder f rom Sydney ’s and Melbourne’s more established art scenes, TONY PERROTTET appea rs on second sprea d here sample copy forcing even the most skeptical outsiders to accept that the sample copy here sample. PHOTOGRAPHER appears on second island has more to offer than scenery and convict ruins. spread here sample copy sample copy here sample. Garnering at least as much attention as MONA itself is th e man behind it, David Walsh—a mysterious multi- millionaire who was largely unknown to the Australian pub - lic 18 months ago. Walsh , 50, hardly fits the mold of a typical art patron: Raised in the work - ing -class suburbs of Hobart, he is a mathematical savant who dropped out of college to make his fortune as a professional gambler (his empire is still fund - ed by computerized betting, mostly on horse racing) before indulging his real passion, art. Since then, he has fascinated Aussies with his irreverent pro - nouncements —he delights in taunting the art establishment, describing his museum as “a subversive adult Disneyland”— and his eccentric behavior. In the Australian press, he is invari - ably referred to as “reclusive,” “enigmatic,” a “hermit million - aire” in the style of Howard Hughes, and is notorious for his aversion to interviews, random - ly backing out at the last minute. In fact, it was this possibility I was dreading after flying straight from New York to Ho - bart to meet with Walsh. He is reported to suffer from Asperg - er’s-like symptoms—telling a German art magazine that as a child he was “internal to the point of autism” —and is appar - ently difficult to lure into con - versation, often staring into space or simply walking away from journalists he doesn’t like. By the time I arrived, I felt like I Devilish: David Walsh calls his museum “a subversive adult Disneyland.” was on a journey to meet an Aus - tralian Kurtz who lurked somewhere up the Derwent River. bass player for the Violent Femmes who moved to Tasmania in 2008. The whole city seemed to be in ferment. Restaurants WHEN I FIRST VISITED TASMANIA’S tiny capital in the 1980s, were packed; crowds thronged the sidewalks; the live music it was like a ghost town. Now I hardly recognized the place. line up included P J Harvey and the Dresden Dolls. From the Henry Jones Art Hotel—a former Georgian ware - Had Hobart actually becom e... cool? house that has been renovated into luxury accommodation s “MONA has changed the culture here,” said Christine with exhibits of local artists in every corridor and room—I Scott, curator at the Henry Jones Art Hotel. “A decade ago, strolled via endless galleries to the Princes Wharf, which has Tasmania had no pulse, but now young people are staying.” long defied any form of progress. It was now taken over by Walsh also subsidizes theat er, art scholarships and public MONA FOMA (Festival of Music and Art), sponsored by installations, leading to wry jokes that Hobart should Walsh and organized by the celebrated Brian Ritchie, former change its name to Mobart. “He’s a remarkable man,” says Peter Timms, one of Australia’s top art critics , who lives in a ziggurat of concrete and rusted iron. From the jetty, I had Hobart. “He has almost single-handedly transformed the climbed a steep stairway designed (Walsh has written) to cultural life of the state. Not many people can say that.” evoke Mediterranean sea journeys, when ancient travelers Because Walsh seemed to exist beneath the radar for so would ascend to a temple to give thanks for a safe voyage. long, rumors about his shadowy life as a gambler and his sex - Walsh has called MONA ’s design, by Melbourne architect ually charged art collection still shroud him in mythology. Nonda K atsalidis , “deliberately underwhelming,” eschew - Friends in the Australian media told me he had been paid ing the usual pomp of art museums, with their grand en - $250 million by Asian casinos to stay away. (Untrue ; he prefers trance halls and facades. In fact, the stairway left me stand - computerized gambling .) Another s aid that Walsh has a pri - ing on MONA ’s roof—the whole museum is excavated from vate apartment within MONA with one-way mirrors on the the sandstone riverbank—where the entrance is a wall cov - floor, so he can wander about naked and secretly observe vis - ered with distorting mirrors. Walsh also owns the surround - itors. (Also untrue; he does have an office inside, but part of ing eight-acre peninsula, so visitors are also invited to wan - its floor is regular glass). Walsh now der off and explore his vineyard, tapas qualifies as Tasmania’s top celebrity. “I bar, wine -tasting room, boutique love his philosophy,” said Scott. “I love “At MONA, art is brewery and high-end restaurant, or his arrogance.” When I said that I entertainment, it’s stay overnight in one of eight gleam - planned to meet him, everyone from cabaret, it’s theater. ing, art-filled guesthouses. taxi drivers to top tourism officials MONA is the world’s Now I was about to get way out of wanted to know the details—probably my comfort zone. My 40 fellow ad - wondering, in reality, whether Walsh first no-bullshit art venturers and I descended a spiral would turn up.

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