By Carol Altmann

I have been looking at visitor numbers for Flagstaff Hill and, I have to tell you, there are worrying signs.

Before I go any further, I need to say three things:

The figures are from Sept 2017 to Feb 2018. The media unit at the Warrnambool City Council will not give me more recent ones. I don’t know why. It also refuses to answer any questions about the figures that have been released.

In the past 15 years, at least $15 million of public money has been poured into Flagstaff Hill to keep it alive. Most recently, $3 million was spent on a new light/sound show and other improvements that opened in June last year. A year on, I think we need to know how things are travelling.

None of what follows is a reflection of the hard work done by the volunteers and many WCC staff who, in recent years, have busted their guts for Flagstaff Hill.

So how are things going?

The expectation was that once the $3 million upgrade was launched in June 2017, visitor numbers would boom.

As the council CEO Bruce Anson said himself, the colonial village needed at least 80,000 paying visitors a year to break even. This would stop the WCC having to spend $500,000, $600,000 or $700,000 a year to help it cover costs.

It was a big ask. Three years ago, paid visitor numbers were below 55,000.

The head of WCC’s tourism arm, David McMahon, who two years ago was handed the whip to flog Phar Lap, remained optimistic. In June last year he told The Standard:

A 30% jump by January was a lofty goal, but here is an awful, ugly, unadulterated fact: the overall visitor numbers at Flagstaff Hill are going backwards.

I have checked and re-checked the numbers and you can look at them yourself right here:

Let me take you through the red arrows:

• In December and January of 2018 – our peak summer holiday season – less people went to Flagstaff Hill than the summer before.
• The same applies to people who saw the new $2 million night show. After an initial spike in the months after the show opened, many more people actually went to the OLD show, in the summer of 2016-17, than they did in the summer just gone.
• In February, when the weather was still warm, less than 2000 people showed up for the whole month, about the same as last February.

This is a shock.

Maybe the person who drew this graph for the council got their colours mixed up, but I don’t think so, because you can see a clear ‘spike’ around November last year.

Why was there a spike? I suspect because Flagstaff Hill had a free open weekend to celebrate its $3 million upgrade.

Did you see the word FREE in that sentence? This brings me to another very important point: how many have people actually paid to get in or paid for tickets to the night show since last Sept?

I don’t know. It’s one of the questions that those who have access to these figures – David McMahon, Flagstaff Hill manager Paul Pinkerton and WCC media head Nick Higgins – won’t answer.

But this question is critical to whether these figures are being fudged. Are these numbers a true reflection of what is going on, or is it even worse?

Free entries do not help the bottom line and if free entries are being included in these numbers, then we are being duped and that, to me, is very serious.

We have been here before, with Fun4Kids.

After many successful years as an annual winter event, Fun4Kids started to bleed money. Then it started to haemorrhage.

Here is David McMahon again being quoted by the paper during last year’s Fun4Kids:

Seven months later, the WCC dumped Fun4Kids.

The cut came without warning, without any fallback plan, without any replacement and, it must be said, without giving the scaled-back F4K festival a chance to see if it could do better than the big-budget stuff of years before.

This is not how we should be planning our future as a prime tourist destination.

We need honest, transparent conversations about how we are tracking, what we can expect and what, if anything, we need to change.

I have written many times before that a fake colonial village that opened in the 70s and still flies the Union Jack high above its premises is no longer appropriate to where Warrnambool is going today.

What could replace it is a topic I will wade into later, but for now we deserve to be told the full story.

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[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]http://the-terrier.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/vault3.jpg[/author_image]Welcome to The Vault – this is where Bluestone will place all sorts of subscriber-access-only material. If you have something you would like to submit, please email us at editor@bluestonemagazine.com.au[author_info][/author_info] [/author]

By Carol Altmann

[box]Bluestone would like to acknowledge subscriber PT for funding the Freedom of Information application used for this piece.[/box]

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] B[/dropcap]luestone subscribers will know that we cop quite a lot of flak for continuing to ask questions about the sacred cows of Warrnambool including Flagstaff Hill, Fun4Kids and the increasing secrecy and lack of transparency around how the Warrnambool City Council runs its affairs – but as long as there are huge gaps in the information, we will keep asking.

Like why is there no formal report on the 2015 Fun4Kids Festival that cost ratepayers $450,000 to run?

Bluestone has just uncovered this fact and it is staggering, irrespective of your views on Fun4Kids or whether it has picked up tourism gongs.

Anyone who has ever dealt with public funds will know that full disclosure on how that public money was spent and the results of that spending is standard procedure.

It’s called accountability.

Indeed I remember when working for the might of News Ltd that we were expected to account for every dollar we claimed when working on a story, right down to producing a receipt for a $10.50 pizza – after all, Rupert might be a very wealthy man, but he was still the boss.

Yet the Warrnambool City Council has spent almost half a million dollars of public money on an event that, until now, has always produced a full report on its budget and the festival results.

When we asked the council media manager for a copy of the 2015 Fun4Kids report, he said the key results of the festival had already been released to the media.

So, what was told to the media via the council’s media unit should be enough.

Well some journalists in Warrnambool might be happy to swallow the pre-chewed lines delivered by the council, but Bluestone is compelled to dive deeper.

So when the council told us that “about 15,000” people attended the 2015 festival and that 24% of these were from Melbourne and that they surveyed 1000 of these patrons for their views, we wanted to know more.

Can we have the full report? We asked.

Nothing was forthcoming, so we lodged a Freedom of Information asking for two things:

i) the report and/or documents prepared for the council relating to the financial results of the 2015 Fun4Kids festival

ii) the report and/or documents prepared for the council relating to the patronage, including any breakdowns or analysis on these figures.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] A[/dropcap]fter the obligatory 45-day wait, the council’s Freedom of Information officer Wendy Clark, who is also chief executive officer Bruce Anson’s personal assistant, came back with this jaw-dropping response:

“I have found no documents that meet the terms of your request…”

This means, we must assume, that there were no reports prepared for the council.

Ms Clark then attached two documents that, we must also assume, amount to the full documentation available on the results of Fun4Kids 2015.

One was a single budget line reference and the other was five paragraphs that included not one single figure, but plenty of motherhood statements like:

“The Fun4Kids Festival achieved a positive percentage increase in the metropolitan market, while maintaining regional attendances. This outcome is a key growth strategy for the festival moving forward.”

I don’t know about you, but whenever I read those last two words – “moving forward” – I know we are deep in the river of public relations spin and far from the shores of plain speaking.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] I[/dropcap]n a similar vein, you may remember the uproar that followed the sudden removal of a row of old tea tree along Pertobe Rd just before Christmas.

The trees were removed, we were told, after an arborist inspected them and found them to be unsafe due to infestation by a certain worm and cracking.

A Bluestone reader dared to ask more. In early January, she asked for a copy of the arborist’s report (or at least more detail) and whether the trees would be replaced.

She is still waiting for a reply, let alone any more information.

Such queries could normally be thrashed out  by elected councillors in general council business, but that, as we know, has been abolished and now councillors are timed for how long they talk, even though meetings were usually over within a couple of hours.

All councillors, not just some, should be demanding more, not less, transparency on behalf of ratepayers.

The fact they aren’t, and that this sort of “trust us” mentality is gripping the council, is of serious concern to anyone who remembers that it is the ratepayers who, just like Rupert, are the boss.

Find more in The Vault here…

Trees, transparency and the truth

Wilma Wright, FOI and more

The big shed schemozzle: we follow the money

…and more

Analysis  – Carol Altmann

The figures for the 2015 Fun4Kids Festival are in, and it’s a case of good news and bad news for the Warrnambool City Council and, by default, its ratepayers.

The good news is that it didn’t blow the bank.

In other words, it kept within the $450,000 budget that was set aside last October and avoided anything like the $150,000 blow-out of last year. Phew.

The bad news, however, is that the festival is attracting less people and therefore, you can assume, generating less economic and tourism benefits to Warrnambool but still costing $450,000 to run.

While there is still no official report on the results, the council released some figures to Bluestone today which said about 15,000 tickets were sold for the seven day event.

Last year, when the event ran over eight days, it attracted 19,758 people.

Of the 15,000 tickets sold this year, 24% were from metropolitan Melbourne – the highest percentage ever – which sounds like great news, until you work out that equates to only 3600 people compared to 3965 in 2015 and 5590 in 2013.

When you are coming off a smaller base, the percentages start to get wobbly.

It is extremely difficult to run a critical eye over a children’s festival – after all, it is aimed at children for god’s sake – but someone also needs to be the kid in the crowd as the Emperor marches by and point out that he is wearing no clothes.

So Bluestone, at risk of being deemed “too negative”, is prepared to say that the Fun4Kids Festival is getting precariously close to being bare-butt naked.

The reason is that the festival is no longer what it was designed to be, which was a major tourism attraction for Warrnambool.

Indeed in its heyday, the festival was pulling crowds of more than 32,000 people: double what it now achieves.

It was also costing less – far less – and at one point it was thought the council may not need to subsidise it at all because it would cover all of its own expenses. Such a notion now seems fanciful.

Here is the critical stat: in 2005, not long after the festival first began, it cost the council $156,354 and attracted 32,112 people.

This year, it cost up to $450,000 and attracted 15,000 people.

These are the cold, hard facts and why council staff last October recommended that the festival be discontinued because it had seemingly had its day.

But the decision to kill Peppa Pig, as it were, proved too emotional for the majority of the councillors and they agreed to press on in 2015 – turning the festival into more of a grassroots, simple-kids-fun kind of event with an extra heavy reliance on volunteers.

According to council spokesman Nick Higgins, this formula is set to be repeated in 2016.

“Council will shortly call for expressions of interest from local people keen to be part of the festival’s community consultation panel,” he said via email.

“The panel worked well this year and generated plenty of ideas and enthusiasm for the festival.”

It is wonderful to see such ideas and enthusiasm and I am sure most of the 15,000 people who turned up this year had a terrific time, but is this the best use of $450,000 each year to generate more visitors to Warrnambool?

Cr Kylie Gaston asked a question this week of Cr Brian Kelson, when he successfully pushed for free CBD parking over December and January, as to where the $70,000 in lost car parking revenue could be cut from within the budget.

I can think of at least one area….

For my money, I think free off-street parking over the busy summer period will do more for local traders than seven days of Fun4Kids where most of the action is confined to a plastic palace on the Civic Green.

If we want to continue to run a kid’s festival for, mostly, local and regional kids to enjoy, then let’s embrace that idea and stop pretending that Fun4Kids is a major tourism magnet.

It was once, but it is no longer, and there still needs to be a full and frank conversation about its long-term future.

Analysis: Carol Altmann

Why is Sovereign Hill in Ballarat still booming after 45 years and Flagstaff Hill in Warrnambool is struggling to survive?

Both are in regional Victoria, both opened in the early 70s and both rely on a mix of reality and fiction to capture our colonial past – yet their individual fortunes could not be more different.

The numbers for Sovereign Hill are simply staggering: in 2013-14 it recorded 731,000 visitors of which more than 100,000 came from overseas.

Flagstaff Hill recorded less than 60,000.

In 2013-14, Sovereign Hill turned over $24 million in revenue and recorded an operating profit of $775,000. It employs 360 staff and has 250 volunteers.

By contrast, Flagstaff Hill has gone from making a profit to running at loss of around $500,000 a year, it employs only 13.5 staff and has 135 volunteers.

The first response might be, oh, Sovereign Hill must receive more government funding. No, it relies on generating its own income to survive.

Oh, but it is only 90 mins from Melbourne! Yes, but Flagstaff Hill is only an hour from the 12 Apostles, one of the top tourist attractions in Australia.

Perhaps the entry fees are cheaper at Sovereign Hill? No, in fact they are more than double the entry fees to Flagstaff Hill at $49.50 adult/$22 child/$122 family.

To my mind, the difference comes down to two critical things: i) Sovereign Hill has aggressively and successfully gone after the lucrative Asian tourist market and ii) Sovereign Hill itself is full of life, characters and things to do.

In his submission to a recent state parliamentary inquiry into heritage and eco tourism, Sovereign Hill Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Johnson laid out some startling facts.

Having sniffed the wind early on the growing Asian tourism market, Sovereign Hill now employs four staff in China to sell itself as a destination direct to the Chinese. (In January it hosted a hugely successful 1850 fashion show and competition in Shanghai. See here.)

It also hires 17 Mandarin and Cantonese speaking tour guides on site – and has used such guides for 20 years.

Incredibly, one in three Chinese tourists to Victoria now visit Sovereign Hill.

Of course Flagstaff Hill has known about the burgeoning Asian market too, but only now is it lumbering into life to do anything about it, with an upgrade of its sound and light show that will be multi-lingual.

When I visited Flagstaff Hill a few weeks ago, there were no multi-lingual maps or signage, and the introductory film shown to all visitors is in muffled and difficult “olde” English (being extracts from a colonial diary).

There were certainly no Mandarin-speaking guides about, in fact there were very few people (visitors or volunteers) about at all, despite it being the height of the school holidays.

Which brings me to the second point. Flagstaff Hill is more static now than it was 30 years ago.

Tourists love things to see, do, touch and listen to, and this is where Sovereign Hill leaves Flagstaff Hill in the shade.

It Sovereign Hill, visitors can pan for gold, have their name printed on a “Wanted” poster, buy some Raspberry drops from the boiled sweet shop, or watch a building “burn” down, and on it goes…

At Flagstaff Hill, the visitors walk into the re-created shops, bar and blacksmiths etc expecting to see someone doing something and – apart from one or two exceptions such as the boatbuilders – there is nobody doing anything.

One more example: Ballarat is freezing in winter, even colder than Warrnambool. But Sovereign Hill turned this down-time into an up-time by launching a two-week Christmas in July event across the school holidays.

Among other things, they light up buildings, create fake snow, run plays by the local theatre group and, last year, the crowds reached a record 42,000. In other words, almost as many people visited Sovereign Hill in those two weeks than for two-thirds of the year at Flagstaff Hill.

So what is Flagstaff Hill doing in response to its troubles?

Well, it is about to spend another $3 million (on top of the $5.7m spent in 2003) “refreshing” the sound and light show ($2m), adding a handful of holograms rather than real people to its buildings – which sounds like a maintenance nightmare – and upgrading the wharf and main entrance.

According to its own masterplan, a full makeover of the village will cost up to $15 million, so rather than throw $3 million into it for little impact, we could try to do more with what we already have.

For example, if the council is persisting with the Fun4Kids Festival, why not hold it at Flagstaff Hill, refocus it with a strong maritime theme (pirates, stowaways, shipwrecks…) move it to the early January school holidays when – compared to events in Port Fairy, Warrnambool is dead – and run special trains from Melbourne (The Shipwreck Express?) that deliver visitors virtually to the door.

And why not offer studio space at Flagstaff Hill to the many artists and crafts folk around the area who do metal work, wood work, glass work, textiles and so forth, so that they get exposure (and sales) and visitors can see people in action?

And why not consolidate all of our historical artefacts in one place, rather than have them spread between Flagstaff Hill and History House (that few visitors even know exists), so that people can see, touch and learn about them?

Lastly, and most importantly, why not make more of the treasures at Flagstaff Hill, such as the Loch Ard ingots which, according to a report in the local paper, Flagstaff Hill founding member John Lindsay thinks are no longer that important at all.

Despite having several hundred of these lead ingots on site, there is not one explanatory sign telling visitors what they are or where they came from.

During my last visit to Flagstaff Hill I was in the Reginald M, that houses some of these ingots, and a young boy asked his mother what they were. She didn’t know, so I said that they had come off the Loch Ard shipwreck and he should try and lift one to see how heavy it was.

His eyes opened wider and he tried to lift one end.

“Orrrrrr.”

History comes alive in those moments – and, as Sovereign Hill well knows, they don’t cost a fortune, but they are pure gold.

[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]http://the-terrier.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/vault3.jpg[/author_image]Welcome to The Vault – this is where Bluestone will place all sorts of subscriber-access-only material, including information on local politics that should be in the public domain, but isn’t. It is a place where you can also have a look behind the scenes of Bluestone, including our Freedom of Information applications, some email exchanges (where appropriate and when dealing with official spokespeople, not our private sources) and anything else we think you might find interesting. If you have something you would like to submit, please email us at editor@bluestonemagazine.com.au[author_info][/author_info] [/author]

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[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] O [/dropcap]ne of the many things we do behind the scenes at Bluestone Magazine is lodge Freedom of Information applications with both the Warrnambool City Council – as the largest council, it is our main focus – and State Government.

The list below is some of those we have lodged in the past 18 months:

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] N [/dropcap]ot all of them are successful, by which we mean that the information we want is considered exempt under the FOI Act and is not released.

This happened with our application to the State Government for more details on the investigation conducted into the ‘Wilma Wright’ letter writing scandal, in which the son of Warrnambool City Council chief executive officer Bruce Anson revealed he was the author of a series of letters penned to the local newspaper under the pseudonym Wilma Wright – letters which were disparaging of some councillors.

This application went all the way to the Freedom of Information Commissioner for review, resulting in 11 pages of “information” being released by the State Government.

I say “information” because it was useless. It was information that had already been made public, or was so redacted as to be unreadable. You can see two examples below.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] S [/dropcap]imilarly, our request for more information into the State Government’s investigation into Flagstaff Hill and the missing Loch Ard lead ingots, the damaged Loch Ard copper sheets and assorted other missing items including the bell from the Newfield, was also denied.

This doesn’t mean the information isn’t out there – it simply means that the law says we can’t access it (and by default, neither can you).

We could keep challenging these rulings, but that takes a lot of time and money and we have to spend both wisely.

Instead, we focus on the successes and just keep moving.

Those successes include finding out more about the controversial traders levy proposed for Warrnambool, a breakdown of the costings of the council’s Hidden Histories project and upgrade of Patloch Lane, and more details of the Warrnambool Council CEO’s salary package.

We can tell you that Bluestone is the only media organisation in Warrnambool lodging FOI applications with the Warrnambool City Council.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] I [/dropcap]n fact when we lodged our first one about 18 months ago, the friendly customer service staff were unsure what to do with it, or how much to charge, because they had not seen one before.

Now we are on a first-name basis with some of the helpful staff at the front counter.

We lodged another FOI which we will tell you more about in a couple of weeks. Once again, it has taken weeks to get information that is not forthcoming simply by asking.

Unfortunately accessing information now costs money, but the impact can be invaluable.

[box]If you would like to chip in to our FOI fund – it costs $27 per application – let us know or simply make a donation at the link below.[/box]

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