By Carol Altmann

New, full-year figures for Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village confirm that despite a $3 million upgrade, the village is in a death spiral.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the reality is a lot worse than the pumped up picture given by adding free visitor numbers to the totals.

Earlier this week Warrnambool City councillors were told that only 50,000 people paid to visit the site or attend the revamped sound and light show in 2017-18. (Just for comparison, Sovereign Hill averages more than 450,000 visitors a year).

I can almost hear their jaws hitting the table.

Another 8500 people, roughly, turned up for free events in 2017-18 and while that might make us feel good, it is not helping to pay the bills. In fact it adds to them.

To be super clear, 50,000 paying visitors is not sustainable. The village needs at least 80,000 to break even, and more if it is ever – ever – to turn a profit like it used to back in the 70s and 80s.

 

As it stands, the council is paying more than $500,000 a year to keep the village afloat. This financial year and next, it expects to spend a total of $1.1 million.

What an absolute waste of money and what really grates my wick is that all of this was so utterly predictable.

The council knew, tourism experts knew, and even Blind Freddy Down The Street was on top of it, that sticking a $3 million BandAid on top of a weeping wound is not going to fix it.

Four years ago, Flagstaff Hill was seriously weeping.

An expensive masterplan commissioned by the council concluded that to make any real difference, to actually turn the place around and give it a whole new lease of life, it would have to spend close to $15 million.

We didn’t have $15 million to spend.

So what do you do? Like a home renovator who has run out of money, do you keep trying to patch the house up, or do you cut your losses and move on?

Our council decided to keep patching: Maremma dogs, Oddball, a new light and sound show about hunting whales, hologram characters instead of real people, a new entrance, stuffed toys…patch, patch, patch.

And meanwhile the poor volunteers – without them we would be in even deeper trouble – and the exhausted council staff just kept trying their best while avoiding the bleeding obvious that the cobblestoned pathways weaving through the village were mostly empty.

Ratepayers and taxpayers have every right to be outraged by this waste of money.

We have been let down by our leaders and decision makers and fed a steady, fatty diet of bullshit and spin and now, here we are, with no plan for the future of Flagstaff Hill.

That clear-eyed planning should have started at least five years ago, when the numbers began to slide and the writing was on the wall that Flagstaff Hill has had its day.

It is not Sovereign Hill – which operates under an entirely different structure and system – and it is not IMAX. It was great, once, but times have changed…dramatically.

Now we know the truth, we need to ask our council to set out a new vision for the Flagstaff Hill site.

What does it have in mind? What are the possibilities? What are the limitations? (Being on Crown land is one of them).

The Flagstaff Hill site is magnificent. The views are spectacular and the lighthouse section is authentic, historic and already showing its appeal as accommodation. What’s next?

 

Whatever happens, we can’t do it on our own. It will need partnerships or investors or entrepreneurs to not only help set the course, but to fund it.

We only have to look across at the revitalised Fletcher Jones site, currently being transformed into The Warrnambool Motor Museum, to see what is possible. A decade ago, that site was almost given up for dead.

The same can happen with Flagstaff Hill, but we need to ring the bell and start turning away from the rocks now, or the greatest shipwreck of all will be itself.

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Comment – Carol Altmann

WE all know the ever-vigilant Maremma dogs have saved the population of little penguins on Warrnambool’s Middle Island, but it’s doubtful they can save the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village.

The 40-year-old tourist village made itself Maremma headquarters ahead of the national release of the movie Oddball, which gives a largely fictionalised version of the Maremma-penguin story and was filmed partly in Warrnambool.

Indeed visitors to Flagstaff Hill can, if they are there at the right time, meet the dogs and buy a made-in-Indonesia stuffed toy to help continue the Maremma program.

Flagstaff Hill manager and head of tourism for the Warrnambool City Council Peter Abbott has also been particularly active – and successful – in trying to generate media coverage for Oddball and its links to our city. (How we stop enthusiastic tourists from wading across to Middle Island itself is another matter).

But behind the scenes, Flagstaff Hill has just recorded its worst visitor numbers in a decade and it’s a long climb back to prosperity.

According to the council, Flagstaff Hill had 54,469 visitors in 2014-15 (excluding functions).

This compares to 60,000 in the previous year and continues the downward slide from the 81,000 that was recorded in 2003-04.

As council CEO Bruce Anson has said before, 80,000 is a break-even position.

This means at least another 25,000 people need to come through the front doors of Flagstaff Hill each year – not to show growth, but to catch up to where it was a decade ago and stop it bleeding around half a million dollars a year.

The “meet the canine stars of Oddball” is part of that plan. The other, even more significant part, involves another movie, if not quite as Hollywood as Oddball.

This is the $2 million being spent on updating the very-dated Shipwrecked sound and light show as part of a $3 million upgrade of the village.

What this new sound and light show will focus on has not been revealed, despite initial hopes to have the project up and running by now.

When Bluestone recently checked with the council, the project was still at the “expressions of interest” stage, which suggests it has not been easy to find the right people for the job, or perhaps $2 million is not enough to deliver what was hoped for.

In the meantime, the council is ploughing ahead with reconfiguring the front entrance (from memory, this is the third renovation of the entrance since the village opened) to blend the visitor information centre into the complex and improve access to Pippies restaurant.

The difficult truth, however, is that window-dressing the entrance and banking on movies to draw more people does not change the fact that the village itself will remain largely static.

This remains it’s biggest failing and the most common complaint from those who pay their entrance fee to find there is not much happening at all inside the cute buildings.

At best, Oddball will provide a visitor spike to Flagstaff Hill while the movie is fresh, and the new $2 million sound and light show may draw another 17,000 people a year until it, too, becomes dated.

The short use-by date of these attractions is why I would rather see the millions that are being spent on Flagstaff Hill plunged into our unique, permanent attractions that don’t date.

I am talking about our incredible natural environment and rich indigenous heritage.

We live on one of the most accessible and spectacular coastlines in the world with a rich indigenous history that is only now beginning to be taken seriously by tourism authorities, although there is still a long way to go.

Imagine what Tower Hill could do with $2 million of state funds? A fabulous bush foods cafe/restaurant might be a start.

Imagine how far $3 million would go in developing and promoting a trail linking Point Richie/Moyjil, to Tower Hill and on to the Budj Bim landscape around Lake Condah, Mt Eccles and Tyrendarra? The Budj Bim area is considered so special, it is on the verge of gaining World Heritage status and we should be ready.

If Warrnambool wants to pull tourists further along the Great Ocean Road, then this is how to do it: by becoming the jumping off point to an enduring and unique landscape and culture that fascinates people from around the world.

Tie this culture and landscape to quality accommodation, food and wine trails, biking and hiking and you have an attraction that is much more dynamic and organic than a static village.

This is the sort of long-term thinking required if we really want to see cameras and action, rather than a “spike” that lasts about as long as the popcorn.