THE PARAGON THEATRE

Queenstown, Tasmania

Queenstown is on the ‘wild west’ coast of Tasmania, four slow winding road hours from Hobart, one of a quartet of pocket sized historical towns where the major industries are tourism and mining. The impenetrable mountains are either rocky peaks or rainforest thick, and utterly eye candy. It also has the heritage listed Paragon Theatre which can and does host 400 people for the occasional concert.

Built at a cost of over 5,000 pounds by the Paragon Picture Co as a “talkie theatre”, the Paragon Theatre opened in 1933. It did the thing through the movie era, and like most then became a decaying orphan. But people loved it.

Co-owner Joy Chappell says she and partner Anthony Coulson bought the theatre from Dr Alex Stevenson in 2017. The Doc had rescued the place in 2003; it had become an indoor cricket stadium. The original pitched timber floor had been backfilled and a concrete slab laid over. Doc painstakingly loved the place, and painted the floor to resemble marble. He did a really good job.

A year later Joy and Tony noticed small floor cracks start to grow, and research quickly revealed the bad news. The timber under-floor had rotted, and the slab was now hanging in free space. An engineer delivered the worst news: fix it by drilling 6-inch (150mm) holes, then drop cylinders and rebar into the rock way below. 68 were done, costing almost $70,000. Faced with 68 neatly bored holes, the owners engineered round shiny dedication plates, so now each is a feature!

The couple of years that followed were encouraging. Live shows came through, name artists could fill the space with 400+. Bands were (and are) accommodated at Joy’s two adjoining guest houses. Paragon gained a name; a quirky historic theatre on the wild West coast that loved live music.

The partners built the 6 x 5 metre stage, installed the cinema screen and cinema audio, and now each day at 5pm they screen a local doco. Self-guided tours through the day are well worth the $7 fee, which we paid before doing this story. Yet sadly some of the transient tourists are too tight for $7. We saw this; ‘Oh can we just have a peek?’ No? And then drive off huffed up in a $300,000 rig!

Then COVID descended in March 2020 and the place went as dark as any and every venue. Those following two nuclear winters of our collective lament ravaged and raged silently. One blessing: Joy and Tony got the JobKeeper subsidy, something they hadn’t and haven’t seen since. So how do they keep the lights on these days?

Joy: “We have other businesses. I’m a chef, my sister and I have the two accommodation houses, and Anthony runs tours and transfers for White Water Rafting.” Between them the partners have the energy and commitment; but what of this 2024 summer?

“It hasn’t really happened,”Joy laments. “For the shows, since the pandemic people just don’t come out. They spent two years at home watching Netflix. The grey nomads don’t come out either; they seem budget constrained.”Some recent shows haven’t come close to breaking even. The venue depends on grants, and they anxiously await this year’s allocation. At time of visit (February), a forthcoming show by The Wolfe Brothers in April looked promising.

Paragon gets help from state and the feds. Joy acknowledges this wholeheartedly. They had a grant and put production gear in. An EV ETX point source PA with an Allen and Heath SQ7 mixing desk do the audio, 20 lights do the rest.

With the poor showing of the 2024 summer, Joy is trepidatious but resolved. The forthcoming grants will determine whether, or how much, support exists for shows through the year.

Price shocks like public liability insurance (doubled last year to $75,000 for the accommodation and the theatre) seem to have stabilised.

Some of the slowdown comes from the variable tourism fortunes of the four somewhat remote west-coast towns. Queenstown is inland, but Strahan, just 40 very slow kms on a twisty road away, is on a coastal inlet with a world famous lake cruise. At time of visiting, we couldn’t get accommodation in Strahan but Queenstown had many available. Turns out that is at the peak of the issues.

Queenstown is pretty, provided you don’t look over your shoulder at the denuded mountains laid bare by copper mining. The other direction is verdant and pretty, bucolic even. Historical with old pubs. Tick! And a world-famous scenic railway with a steam engine! Built to serve the mines, then appropriated to tourism some decades back. And utterly mismanaged since.

In lockdown, there was zero maintenance done. The town folk watched a literal slow-motion train wreck, which has now metastasised into a town-wide downturn.

We had ruled out that 90-minute rail outing at 11.30am as FAR too expensive and also prone to diesel locomotive substitution rather than steam. Seems many others feel the same.

The formerly once well patronised attraction is a downsized and pale ghost of itself. Yet the town hasn’t got an effective Chamber of Commerce, and the regional tourism association seems sanguine because Strahan is firing on all cylinders. And QT is not. It’s obvious as we walk the streets and test the couple of pubs.

Which leaves the Paragon looking for the unicorn – a festival, a sporting gathering (like, trail biking or any of the endless adventure possibilities in this oh-so almost NZ corner of Tassie) or – something.

One and all, visit or consider doing a show in Queenstown Tasmania!

www.theparagon.com.au

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In this occasional series, Julius Grafton talks to the people out there holding the placard high, working against the odds, keeping our historical theatres open. Do you know or have a ‘Theatre in the Wild’? Email juliusmedia@me.com