King Neptune, safari parks and the Bell Tower: Perth’s decades-long quest for the one big idea that will bring tourists to our city

Drive one hour north of Perth towards Yanchep and visitors will eventually come face-to-face with King Neptune. At least they will come face-to-face with a giant limestone sculpture of the Roman god of the sea, who once welcomed crowds to Alan Bond’s Atlantis Marine Park to see bottlenose dolphins and seals perform tricks. Far from presiding over the world’s oceans, this king with the rictus grin no longer even presides over the Two Rocks water park that was supposed to be Perth’s Disneyland but closed in 1990 after less than a decade. The closure — blamed on rising costs and falling crowds — was simply another in a long line of tourist attractions that were supposed to put Perth on the global map. Like the others, it fell short. Front-page headlines this week declaring Perth needs “one big thing” would have triggered deja vu for locals who have heard familiar words used over the years (and decades) to tout various would-be tourist attractions. The latest report by think-tank Committee for Perth highlighted the need for a landmark “one-of-a-kind drawcard” to define Perth to the outside world. It was just another chapter in our capital city’s identity crisis. “Perth’s beauty, landscape, weather and friendly community are often mentioned when local people are asked to describe Perth — while non-residents commonly do not know how to describe the region,” the report said. “It is apparent that there is no icon, clear brand or compelling attraction that defines Perth to the outside world.” Time will tell if the world centre for Indigenous culture proposed as the latest solution to the “one big thing” problem eventuates. Similar ideas have been around for years and even once formed part of the plan for Elizabeth Quay. As recently as May this year Federal Labor MP Patrick Gorman proposed a national Indigenous art and cultural museum should be built in time for Perth’s bicentenary in 2029. Even if it does happen, such a centre could still join the line of projects that were supposed to be city-makers but landed with more of a whimper than a bang. On the roll call is: Elizabeth Quay, Yagan Square and the Bell Tower. And if it does not even get off the starting blocks it can join a far longer list of big ideas that never made it, including plans for a dinosaur park in the Swan Valley, an indoor snow dome or transforming Fremantle Prison into a “resort complex”. History Council of WA president and Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Western Australia Jenny Gregory was part of the Fremantle Prison Trust Committee at the time the latter was proposed around the 1990s. “They were casting about for what they were going to do and one of the things that came up was to turn it (the prison) into a resort complex,” she said. “Because the cells were too small you’d have to knock down walls to create bedrooms ... it would have really obliterated the prison’s heritage.” Another thwarted idea that could have changed the face of one of Perth’s rare tourism icons, if it had eventuated, was the proposal for an Olympic-sized swimming pool in Kings Park in the 1950s. “We had the Commonwealth Games in the bag ... (but) all we had were river pools like the Crawley Baths, which were full of jellyfish,” Professor Gregory said. “But there was a huge controversy about it because Kings Park has always been such a special place.” As far back as 1950 an article in the Kalgoorlie Miner quoted then Lord Mayor of Perth Joseph Totterdell as advocating for an Olympic-sized pool that could be completed in time for the 1955 Melbourne Olympics, saying “Perth needs something attractive”. The pool was eventually built at Beatty Park. But debate over how best to capitalise on Kings Park has continued, nearly 60 years after the unveiling of a then £166,500 plan to establish a botanic garden to become “a major tourist attraction”, according to a 1962 article in The Beverley Times. A cable car to connect Kings Park to the CBD was first suggested by former premier Carmen Lawrence about 30 years ago and revived in 2015 by the State Government. The Tourism Council said it could be the “missing piece” in Perth’s tourism landscape and become the city’s signature experience. A public backlash, led by businesswoman Janet Holmes a Court, followed and the idea appears to be in limbo. Sometimes city-defining ideas, even the controversial ones, have eventuated. Sort of. Perth’s Bell Tower opened in 2000, a year after an article in The West Australian suggested it could “become a symbol for Perth in international tourists’ minds”. And the years 2016, 2017 and 2018 saw three massive infrastructure projects, each billed as a game-changer, officially open to the public: Elizabeth Quay, Optus Stadium and Yagan Square. Yet none of these projects has succeeded in solving Perth’s identity crisis. Community opposition to the Bell Tower meant the $3.5 million second part of the project, which was supposed to include a pedestrian link from the city to a redeveloped Barrack Square, was scrapped and the controversial design never achieved iconic status. Parts of Elizabeth Quay and the Perth City Link precinct, over which Yagan Square is supposed to preside, still resemble construction sites thanks to delays in developing some lots. Optus Stadium has largely been a success but has yet to prove itself as a true tourist drawcard outside the State. Former Victorian premier and Liberal elder Jeff Kennett still thinks it could achieve that aim. “When Colin Barnett built the stadium I spoke to Colin and said 20 per cent of all the seats should be made available to supporters of the opposing teams and Western Australia should market itself every week,” he said. “Because what invariably happens ... people don’t go just for the match they go for a weekend or for a week. “You’ve got to ask yourself what’s going to attract people to Western Australia, when the border opens and clearly football is a massive attraction and Western Australia has not used that to the extent (that it could). “Special packages could be put together and they should be sold through the other clubs. There’s no point in building a beautiful stadium if it’s only your stadium.” The idea of using events, not just big infrastructure projects, to lure tourists to Perth is not exactly new. As far back as 1954 The Northam Advertiser noted that the Festival of Perth, which had begun the previous year, “has developed to such an extent that it may well become a major tourist attraction in the Commonwealth”. But while events like the Red Bull Air Race, which was cancelled in 2010, and Perth International Arts Festival’s 2015 Giants extravaganza have been successful in their own right they have not become part of Perth’s ‘brand’. University of Melbourne professor of Architecture and Urban Design Kim Dovey, who has written extensively about the revitalisation of Melbourne, suggested it was no surprise that politicians like to talk about big ideas rather than incremental change. It is the latter, rather than the former, that has cemented Melbourne’s brand as one of the world’s most liveable cities. “Politicians depend on a three to four-year electoral cycle for their jobs and it is only big ideas that can break through the news cycle,” he said. “Great cities are built incrementally as the layers of ideas and resources accumulate and they are built on smart infrastructure that is very expensive and largely invisible. “Big ideas can be great if they are also good ideas and are not the only forms of investment.” Professor Dovey grew up in Perth near Scarborough beach at a time when it was a “seedy but interesting place” and had a front-row seat to one of Perth’s controversial tourism developments, Observation City. “I watched as it (Scarborough beach) was damaged by the Observation City development in the 1980s and was pleasantly surprised by the high quality of recent development,” he said. “This is a good example of a big idea designed to attract global tourists causing local damage and of a more enlightened redevelopment based on building the attraction for locals. If you make Perth great for locals it will also attract tourists.” It is not just politicians who feel the lure of one big idea. Entrepreneurs and business people have just as often been the driving force behind proposals over the years. The late billionaire Stan Perron made his fortune in iron ore but back in the 1940s he had a more modest plan to build Perth’s first ice-skating rink on Hay Street with his brother Keith. The pair went so far as to raise funds and rent a disused brickyard where they made nearly a quarter-of-a-million bricks themselves before the plan collapsed when the State government rescinded their building permit for the site. As recently as last year a group of Perth businessmen took the wrappers off a plan for what was billed as WA’s only “true global attraction”: the $650 million Australian Biome Project. This proposed three giant bio-domes on the banks of the Swan River in front of Crown Towers and alongside Optus Stadium, which would allow visitors to experience different parts of the State without leaving the city. Project spokesman Adam Barnard said in an interview it could do for the international market what Optus Stadium had done domestically. Entrepreneur Sam Barnett, son of the former WA premier, also resurfaced last year with a big idea: an open range zoo in the State’s far north. It had echoes of his father’s plan for a safari park in the Swan Valley, which got about as far off the ground as the pygmy hippopotamuses intended to populate it. Perth people who were around in the 1970s and 1980s will know the idea is even less original than that. For 17 years Wanneroo had an open-range lion zoo and until it closed in 1988, carloads of visitors could and did visit Bullen’s African Lion Safari, which later became Wanneroo Lion Park. Big ideas can win politicians votes and capture the public’s attention but they can also produce a strong reaction in the other direction. A $40 million wave park in Alfred Cove was scuttled last year after bitter protests from nearby residents while a dinosaur museum proposed for Middle Swan in 2014 floundered amid fears it would impact the character of the rural area. Some ideas never make it out of the planning stage but appear to simply fade away, like a $1.5 billion resort and water park proposed for Whiteman Park in 2012 or the $50 million indoor snow dome that was to have been completed before the 2010 Winter Olympics, with locations scouted in the Perth Hills, Ellenbrook, Armadale and Joondalup. Other tourist attractions have survived for a time and then shut down, like the El Caballo Blanco theme park founded by Perth businessman Ray Williams in 1974, which pulled in more than a quarter-of-a-million visitors a year at its height; Scarborough’s Luna Park, which was demolished to make way for a shopping centre and even Pioneer World in Armadale, which admittedly never claimed it would pull in overseas crowds but where a generation of Perth schoolchildren learned to pan for gold. Curtin University senior lecturer in tourism Michael Volgger said there was a place for so-called “product development”, where a city sets out to establish one big tourist icon. “Iconic attractions do play a role in tourism and in particular in increasing awareness and attractiveness in a crowded international market,” he said. “It helps if people can associate a particular place with an identity or even something more tangible ... like a particular building.” But he said icons did not necessarily have to be purpose built, like Sydney’s Opera House or Tasmania’s MONA. They could develop more organically, like Perth’s modest blue boathouse which attracts a steady stream of tourists clutching SLRs. “What is important to recognise is that an icon can have strong benefits but sometimes it can also become an artificial feature or the seed of unwanted concentration of tourists if it is not well-embedded into a broader network of attractions, into what marketing people would call a narrative or what more accurately should probably be called the identity of a place,” he said. “We should avoid doing things just for tourists and even more so we should not implement random things. “It is probably less crucial whether it is the one big thing, but rather that such an initiative is authentic and linked to the identity of the place, supported by the communities and professionally implemented. “The market and the society will decide whether it is the one big thing or one thing among others that together become big because they create a coherent atmosphere.”