COVER STORY
Opponents of a kunanyi/Mt Wellington cable car are gearing up for a fierce fight as the State Government paves the way for development and a re-energised company changes tack in a bid to sell the controversial project to the Tasmanian public
Tensions mount as the proposal for a cable car up kunanyi/ Mt Wellington is brought out for another airing
Until recently, the idea of a cable car on Hobart’s kunanyi/Mt Wellington was a bit of a joke in local newsrooms. One of those stories for reporters to dig out in desperation on a slow news day, most likely drawing the same rolled eyes from listeners and readers as plans for a bridge across Bass Strait or a tunnel under Hobart.
Since the Mt Wellington Aerial Railway was first mooted in State Parliament in 1905, the idea of a cable car has continued to float around without any realistic prospects. But things have shifted in the past six months. The latest in a string of cable-car proposals is being treated seriously, with the passing of special legislation allowing the State Government to acquire Hobart City Council land on the mountain to facilitate the development. The commercial zone at the mountain’s pinnacle has been expanded, potentially allowing for construction of a larger visitor centre. This year the State Government will push ahead with separate laws to speed up approval processes for developments deemed “major projects”.
“We wouldn’t continue to fight if we didn’t think the cable car was a very real possibility,” says Ted Cutlan, a South Hobart resident who has opposed plans for a cable car on kunanyi/ Mt Wellington since the 1990s.
Cutlan fears that by the time more southern Tasmanians start taking the cable car proposal seriously, it will be too late to stop it. He, his wife Joy and many of their neighbours are members of Residents Opposing a Cable Car (ROCC), which has raised more than $11,000 through crowdfunding to help pay for legal and planning appeals.
A community event, called Mountain Mayday, will be held at South Hobart’s Cascade Gardens on May 6, featuring prominent cable car opponents including author Richard Flanagan, former Greens leader Bob Brown and Independent MP Andrew Wilkie.
On the other side of the fence, those spruiking the development are also urging the community to engage with a project they are confident will proceed. While acknowledging he
will never get fierce opponents over the line, chief proponent Adrian Bold is confident he can garner 90-per-cent support from the wider Tasmanian public.
“Rather than just protesting to try to stop the project it would be nice if they [opponents] could say, ‘let’s be reasonable. If it’s going to happen, let’s minimise the impacts and find the best way forward’,” Bold says. “There are rational people who don’t necessarily want to see it happen but are helping us deliver the best proposal possible.”
Southern Tasmanians have a powerful connection with kunanyi/Mt Wellington, rejoicing at the easy accessibility of this wilderness wonderland from the city, or simply observing the mountain’s changing moods.
No matter where they live in and around Hobart, kunanyi – the mountain’s Aboriginal name – is the first thing many locals see when they open their blinds and curtains in the morning. It is a source of constant delight and bemusement – glowing at dusk, hiding stubbornly behind a morning blanket of cloud, or showing off a dusting of snow, sometimes in the middle of summer. Even those with no religious or indigenous background often describe it as sacred or spiritual.
Last year, a ReachTEL poll of 2817 Tasmanians commissioned by the Mercury found 54.1 per cent supported a cable car and 30.6 per cent were against the idea. Geography played a role, with support highest in Bass, in the north of the state, and lowest in Hobart’s Denison, where 40.3 per cent said they were against a cable car and 47.6 per cent were in favour.
While opponents of a cable car sit in various camps – from those who consider the plan “environmental vandalism”, to those who fear taxpayers are doomed to be lumped with an unviable, redundant eyesore – a common sentiment is that the mountain is fine just as it is.
Having secured the support of the major political parties (although Labor argues the project should go to tender), convincing locals their mountain needs to change is the chief challenge for Bold and fellow directors of the Mount Wellington Cableway Company. To that end, in 2018 the company is tweak- ing its narrative, focusing on what it calls the dire state of the road to the pinnacle and dangling the carrot of better walking tracks and public amenities including toilets and lookouts.
“The status quo is not sustainable,” company chairwoman Jude Franks says during an interview that turns out to be a bit of a moving feast, or a moving coffee meeting at least, as a result of MWCC having no bricks and mortar base. The busy South Hobart cafe that was to be our original interview location was too noisy, so we have shifted down the road to the church cafe by the rivulet.
“This is about increasing amenity, not just for tourists, but locals,” Franks says. “We are not talking about closing the road in any way, but taking the load from it.”
Bold takes the running with the sustainability theme, saying a “core reason” for pursuing a cable car is to pay for the mountain’s upkeep, through a lease MWCC would pay to the Wellington Park Management Trust, which manages the land on and around the mountain. It is about, he says, shifting the cost of maintenance away from local ratepayers to the tourists who make up the bulk of visitors to the summit. The money, Bold argues, could provide better facilities, including for rock climbers (some of whom have spoken out against the development because of its proximity to the mountain’s iconic Organ Pipes). With tourist numbers to Hobart increasing each year, Bold and Franks argue the existing Pinnacle Rd, built in the 1930s, will not survive under the increasingly heavy load.
“The mountain’s park management is woefully underfunded,” Bold says. “There is a lot of angst in the community about the need for better facilities, including new walking trails and mountain-biking trails. Rock climbers and paragliders would like facilities, too. There are weed issues … and we’re constantly being told there’s no funds.”
Wellington Park Management Trust chairwoman Christine Mucha later disputes the “woefully underfunded” tag, but points out that “any park wants more money”.
“The landowners, the Hobart and Glenorchy councils, make significant ongoing investment in regard to community needs,” Mucha says. “They are doing quite a lot of work on track improvement. We’re always looking for improvement, but I’m not aware of any significant angst.”
Franks describes the proposed cable car, which she has been championing since late 2015 when she was approached by Bold to join the company, as the ultimate eco-tourism project. She says opponents “hide behind an environmental justice or social justice banner”, whereas in her mind the project is the epitome, not the antithesis, of sensitive environmental tourism.
A well-regarded tourism adviser who has worked with some of the biggest players in the Tasmanian industry, Franks’ presence adds considerable clout to the cableway company, although Bold is at pains to say she was hired through a “competitive process”. He approached her after seeing her speak at a University of Tasmania panel event on Tasmania’s tourism future.
While initially wary, Franks says she jumped on board once Bold and his offsider and former schoolmate Christian Rainey ran through the details. “It ticked all the boxes for me and I thought [the proposal] was more highly developed and sophisticated than anything I had seen in a long while,” she says. “I was prepared for the fact it was controversial and I was warned I would never work again in this town. It’s hard when you believe in something and you know it’s the right thing and it’s such a significant project, to feel you have to apologise for your involvement. I’ve stopped doing that now.”
Bold, 36, is a marketing entrepreneur who creates 3D promotional visuals for property developers and, in his words, helps “guide them through planning”. He started his first digital modelling company in 2001 when he was 19 and still at uni. He now runs a similar company called Riser + Gain with Rainey, who was in his computer graphics class at Hobart’s Hutchins boys’ school. Bold is also marketing manager for ISW, an IT company based in Battery Point. In 2011, he looked set to run for Hobart City Council elections, but his nomination was not received in time, although his Twitter handle is still @Vote1AdrianBold. While he has many supporters in the Tasmanian business community, Bold has also rubbed plenty of people up the wrong way. In 2013, he angered Tasmania’s Aboriginal community by registering the mountain’s dual Aboriginal name “kunanyi” as an internet domain name.
Bold’s interest in a cable car began when he made a sales pitch to the late Tim Burbury, a prominent Tasmanian civil engineer who pursued the project for two decades. “I think I was in primary school when Tim Burbury first came out with the cable car,” Bold says. “In 2005 or 2006 there must have been some media around him wanting to have another crack. Having been on cable cars overseas I knew the potential, but it was pretty obvious he didn’t have it right. I went to him and said ‘when you’re ready, I’m able to help – I have the technology to explain the visual impact, for better or worse’.”
Although Burbury did not take up Bold’s offer to make a 3D visualisation of his cable car proposal, Bold says they stayed in touch until Burbury’s death in 2010.
“The last thing he said to me a week before he died was ‘if you want to take the running, go for it’ and ‘don’t give up’,” Bold says. “I went to his funeral at St David’s Cathedral, which was huge, and the cable car was spoken about. I guess I sat on that for about six months and then in 2011 I thought maybe I could have a crack. If I was on my death bed and felt so passionate about something I hadn’t been able to achieve and knew someone able to take that on, I would be wanting to make sure that person did it.
“I feel as though I have got a moral obligation to see his wishes through.”
High up in foothills of kunanyi/Mt Wellington, well past South Hobart’s old-school blue badminton centre and historic Cascade Brewery, my phone’s GPS eventually leads me to Ted and Joy Cutlan’s house. Fairy wrens flit among the lush garden, overflowing with myrtles, elms and magnolias, which the former rare plant nursery owners have tended for 40 years. The house itself was built after the 1967 bushfires, with a couple of extensions added over the decades, including a back deck that offers a view of kunanyi’s summit.
Their home is a paradise, but the Cutlans say their opposition to a cable car is more than “Not In My Backyard” protectionism.
“We are directly affected but it’s simply not about the NIMBY thing,” Ted says. “It’s about how you feel about living in Hobart, the environment and sense of place. Have they actually thought about why people live here and what they might be giving up in order to satisfy the requirements of the tourists?”
In the lead-up to the recent state election some Hobart residents engaged rock climbers to string a “no cable car” banner across the Organ Pipes. In 1994, the Keen’s Mustard sign in South Hobart, made from white painted rocks in a paddock, was rearranged to read the same protest message.
“That was me,” Ted says of the headline-grabbing rock manoeuvre 24 years ago.
“It was completely overgrown and I had to go and cut down huge weeds and spray paint the rocks and of course I had to make a commitment to the person who owned it to put it all back again. At one stage students changed it to ‘go cable car’ and we had to change it back.”
The Cutlans plan to move away from South Hobart within the next couple of years (“We need something flatter,” Ted says) but say it will not stop them fighting against what they see as an intrusive, inappropriate development for the mountain.