By Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] T [/dropcap]his is a tale of two, century-old, sister ships with two very different fortunes: one is about to undergo a million dollar restoration in Tasmania, while the other is being scrapped at Flagstaff Hill in Warrnambool.

The Rowitta and the Cartela are both wooden steamer ferries built in Hobart by Purdon & Featherstone, with the Rowitta the older of the pair, being built in 1909, followed by the Cartela in 1912.

They are now among only a handful of river steamers left in Australia and generate the sort of excitement among wooden boat enthusiasts that befit their rarity.

In the case of the Cartela, which has been converted from steam to diesel but has never been out of service, that excitement is only building.

A dedicated band of volunteers formed the Cartela Restoration Project Trust that lobbied for years to secure funding to restore the ferry to its original state, including its original 1912 steam engine. The project has come to fruition and, as of August last year, the Cartela restoration has been the centrepiece of the revitalisation of the port of Franklin, in the Huon Valley, as the home of wooden boat building.

For the Rowitta however, despite being one of the oldest vessels in the collection at the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village, it is the end of the road.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] H [/dropcap]aving been brought to the fledgling Flagstaff Hill back in the early 1970s as a hull, the Rowitta – which has also been known over its life as the Sorrento and Tarkarri – was the focus of a major restoration in 1989 under master boat builder, the late Ron Stewart, who’s son, Garry Stewart, continues the craft in Port Fairy today.

The Rowitta became a jewel in Flagstaff Hill’s crown, both as a popular venue for weddings, an educational tool for students and as a historic tourist attraction.

Tasmanian Irene Atkins wrote about her visit to Flagstaff Hill in 1998 and the thrill of seeing the boat she remembered from her childhood in Launceston being fully restored and taking pride of place on the lake.

“The first thing I said was ‘You have got the right colours’. They replied that they had gone down several coats of paint to establish that information,” she wrote in ‘On the Tide‘.

One of the people to show Irene around that day was boat builder Jeff McMurrich who is still the main boat builder at Flagstaff Hill and who, in 2008, gave a prescient interview to the ABC’s Jeremy Lee in which he warned that the Rowitta was in need of significant restoration work within 10 years, or it may not survive.

Sitting permanently in fresh water rotted the hull and required the Rowitta to be drydocked for proper repairs, which was difficult because it was part of the village’s Shipwrecked sound and light show *.

Instead, as Jeff explained, he did what he could with the “shoestring” budget Flagstaff Hill had to spend on such things. It was, he said, a case of “patching” rather than preventative maintenance – and this could only work for so long.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] D [/dropcap]espite these dire warnings, the 100th birthday of the Rowitta in 2009 was met with cheerful optimism by Flagstaff Hill, with manager Peter Abbott telling the local newspaper that the ship was still a popular drawcard.

“It’s a great venue for many types of functions and its also part of our sound and light show so the Rowitta’s definitely got plenty of years left in her yet,” he said.

In fact the boat would not see out another decade.

Faced with mounting losses at Flagstaff Hill, the Warrnambool City Council decided a couple of years ago to discontinue all maintenance of the Rowitta, which sealed her fate.

Alongside this decision has been a subtle reconfiguring of Rowitta’s place in the Flagstaff Hill story.

No longer is the ship historic, but referred to by Flagstaff Hill in its correspondence as a “replica”.

Similarly, the ship’s story is no longer considered relevant to the village, yet the South Australian built boat, the Reginald M, which arrived at Flagstaff Hill at about the same time, is.

The Rowitta’s transition from treasure to trash is perhaps best captured in this line from the council’s February 15 meeting:

“Rowitta is a replica ship and deemed as surplus to the future of FHMV. Her removal will allow our limited wooden boat repair resources to focus on our real heritage vessels.”

Work on removing parts of the ship has already begun.

*The consolidation of the wooden boat fleet is part of a $3 million upgrade of Flagstaff Hill to start later this year, including a $2 million upgrade of the sound and light show.

[box]We asked former Flagstaff Hill director PETER RONALD, now living in Tasmania, for his view on the destruction of the Rowitta. Read his exclusive analysis piece here. Bluestone would also like to thank the Launceston Library for its assistance with the history of the Rowitta.[/box]

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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.

UPDATE – Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] T [/dropcap]he Western Australian Museum has further investigated an incorrect claim by Flagstaff Hill director Peter Abbott that more than 6680 items from its collection were unaccounted for and believes the damaging claim was a result of “confusion”.

As first reported by Bluestone yesterday, the museum strongly rejected a statement by Mr Abbott in a January 10 letter to the Warrnambool Standard in which he used the example of the Western Australian Maritime Museum to defend the fact that Flagstaff Hill cannot locate more than 130 items listed in its collection.

Mr Abbott wrote that museums around the world “go through random collection reviews” that often reveal “items have been moved or misplaced”.

“As an example…Western Australian Maritime Museum in 2009 found over 6680 (items) unaccounted for,” he wrote.

The Western Australian Museum covers six sites, including the WA Maritime Museum.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] I [/dropcap]n a statement to Bluestone today, WA Museum Chief Executive Officer Alec Coles reiterated that 6680 items “are not missing from its collection nor ever were”.

He said, however, that further investigations revealed an internal report was commissioned in 2008 to “improve and harmonise the documentation and storage of the WA Museum’s extensive maritime archeology collection, as well as those collections from Western Australian wrecks held in private collections”.

Mr Coles said the report was separate to the operations of the WA Maritime Museum, which deals with contemporary material.

“(The WA Maritime Museum) was not the subject of this internal report, the purpose of which was to demonstrate the need for improved document and storage systems which have since been achieved,” he said.

“The report states that a number of items at the time were either not audited as part of the process, or that there were inconsistencies between database and object entries, not least because a number of different databases were in use at the time leading to conflicting numbers,” he said.

Mr Coles said the total of items either not audited or with inconsistent entries was “the number cited – 6680 – but does not represent missing items”.

“In fact, the museum conducts regular audits of its collections including two full collection audits for reporting and accounting purposes in 2009 and 2014 and in both cases there were no anomalies,” he said.

Mr Coles said the museum now understood the source of the information and “can also understand where the confusion may have arisen”.

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EXCLUSIVE – Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] T [/dropcap]he Western Australian Museum has strongly rejected a claim by Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village director Peter Abbott that it could not locate more than 6600 items in its collection.

[box]See our update to this story here: WA Museum chief says claim came from “confusion”.[/box]

Mr Abbott made the claim in a January 10 letter to the Warrnambool Standard in which he used the Western Australian example to defend the fact that Flagstaff Hill cannot locate more than 130 items listed in its collection.

Mr Abbott wrote that museums around the world “go through random collection reviews” that often reveal items “have been moved or misplaced”.

“As an example…Western Australian Maritime Museum in 2009 found over 6680 (items) unaccounted for,” he wrote.

The Western Australian Museum covers six sites, including the WA Maritime Museum. Its chief executive officer, Alec Coles, tonight described the claim as simply erroneous.

“The Western Australian Museum rejects any suggestion that (it) could not locate more than 6680 items in 2009 or at any other time,” he said.

“The number is almost half of the Maritime History Department’s total collection, so any claim that WAMM could not locate more than 6680 items is clearly erroneous.”

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] M [/dropcap]r Coles said the Maritime History Department had “occasionally found discrepancies involving three or four items as a result of loans or de-acquistions, or lists not being updated, but these issues have always been resolved”.

He also rejected Mr Abbott’s assertion that credible museums undertake “random collection reviews”.

“The Western Australian Museum does not conduct random collection reviews,” Mr Coles said.

“As a State Government agency, the Western Australian Museum is required to conduct regular audits of its collection for government reporting and accounting purposes and these are required to be approved by the office of the Auditor-General.

“The most recent of these was conducted last year.”

When asked where Mr Abbott may have found the information to make such a claim, Mr Coles said that was for Mr Abbott to explain.

“A thorough check of the WA records and with senior staff can’t find any source of the information that might have given rise to the claim,” he said.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] M [/dropcap]r Cole’s comments come on the back of confirmation that Flagstaff Hill is under formal investigation by Heritage Victoria over the missing items from its collection and damage to relics from the wreck of the Loch Ard.

As recently reported in Bluestone Magazine, two of the 10 copper sheets from the Loch Ard (1878) that were loaned to Flagstaff Hill by the Federal Government have been cut.

The rejection of Mr Abbott’s claims also comes in light of a separate scandal, in which Mr Abbott was named by the local newspaper as the author of a string of anonymous comments made to its online forums. He often used the forums to make personal attacks against Warrnambool City councillors Cr Brian Kelson and Cr Peter Hulin.

Cr Hulin will move a motion of no confidence against CEO Bruce Anson at the first council meeting of the year on Monday (Feb 2), citing his handling of Mr Abbott’s behaviour as an example of why the Local Government Minister should be asked to intervene.

The same meeting will also discuss a proposed $3 million upgrade to Flagstaff Hill, which has suffered from a steady downturn in visitors in recent years.

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EXCLUSIVE: Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] T [/dropcap]he Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village in Warrnambool is under formal investigation by Heritage Victoria over missing items from its collection and damage to relics from the wreck of the Loch Ard.

As recently reported in Bluestone Magazine, two of the 10 copper sheets from the Loch Ard (1878) that were loaned to Flagstaff Hill by the Federal Government have been cut.

It is believed that a large slice was taken from one of the sheets in recent years for use as a sculpture or trophy, while the other has had a 10 x 10cm piece removed.

The Loch Ard, arguably Australia’s most famous shipwreck, is listed as a wreck of state and Commonwealth significance.

It is an offence under Section 13 of the Commonwealth Historic Shipwrecks Act to “destroy or cause damage to a historic shipwreck or historic relic” and can lead to a fine of up to $10,000 or imprisonment for an individual, or a $5000 fine for a body corporate.

In addition, Flagstaff Hill manager Peter Abbott recently confirmed in a letter to the local newspaper that the museum had lost track of at least 129 items from its collection, including the brass ship’s bell from the wreck of the Newfield (1892) that was once displayed in the Great Circle Gallery.

Heritage Victoria told Bluestone Magazine late Friday that, as a result of the revelations, it had opened an investigation into the collection practices at Flagstaff Hill.

“Tim Smith, Executive Director, Heritage Victoria confirmed Heritage Victoria is investigating the care and storage of items at Flagstaff Hill Maritime Museum,” a spokeswoman said via email.

Mr Smith was unavailable for further comment.

Heritage Victoria is responsible for the initial investigation into any potential breaches of the federal law governing historic shipwrecks. It is also responsible for investigating if there have been any breaches of the Victorian Heritage Act, which carries its own penalties.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] F [/dropcap]lagstaff Hill, which is accredited by the museum governing body, Museums Australia, has had the spotlight turned on its collection management processes after questions late last year by Warrnambool City Councillor Brian Kelson.

Mr Kelson’s probing about gaps in the museum’s online collection database led to revelations that 220 lead ingots from the Loch Ard could not be accounted for.

Flagstaff Hill was given custody of 872 lead ingots in 1984 as part of the same federal loan agreement that governed the copper sheets.

Mr Abbott and council chief executive officer Bruce Anson have both since given assurances that the bulk of the missing ingots are in the hull of the derelict Rowitta ferry, although there has been no official count due to the poor condition of the vessel.

The ferry, which sits on the pond at Flagstaff Hill, is scheduled for demolition later this year.

Mr Abbott has recently been caught up in a separate scandal, after he was named by the local newspaper as the author of several anonymous comments made to its online forums, in which he made personal attacks against Cr Kelson and Cr Peter Hulin.

Cr Hulin has since indicated he will move a motion of no confidence against CEO Mr Anson at the first council meeting of the year on February 2, citing his handling of Mr Abbott’s behaviour as an example of why the Local Government Minister should be asked to intervene.

 [button link=”http://the-terrier.com.au/subscribe-2/” type=”icon” icon=”heart” newwindow=”yes”]Bluestone needs at least 500 subscribers in 2015. If you wish to support independent media, please click here to become one.[/button]

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