TASMANIA
Sexy devil.
MONA is a striking world class beauty and deceptively intricate facility, up there with your Guggenheims and Tate Moderns.
Way down southward on Australia’s map of Tassie (that’s an in-joke: Australians like to call their pubes their “map of Tassie”) lies a city which, its shiny number plates point out, allows you to explore the possibilities.
For the longest time Tasmania, and therefore its sleepy, well-mannered capital, Hobart, offered little to entice international gay holidaymakers, or even mainland inhabitants who needed a weekender to detox their weary disco bones.
Tasmania was the last state in the country to decriminalise homosexuality, as recent as 1997, a throwback to the virulent anti-gay conservative streak that has long pervaded this island. That conformist mentality dates back to the colonial era where the invading English saw fit to kill each and every one of the native Aborigines on the island. They next drove the world’s largest carnivorous marsupial, the Tasmanian Tiger, to extinction by the 1930s. Tasmania’s shameful past finally had a reprieve in the 1980s when the greenies invaded, arguing that tourism, not logging, was the future for Tasmania. As with many things (bongs aside), they were right. The Franklin River flowed and Tasmania’s green spaces were preserved for future generations to enjoy and spend their cashed-up tourist Australian dollars on.
Hobart International Airport (yes, that is what they call it) is nothing special – more hangar than glamour – but it’s the gateway to an island of many different holiday possibilities.
What, in 2014, makes Hobart so enticing for gay travellers comes down to one big, bold, daring, impressive factor. Her name is MONA (Museum of Old and New Art). This self-described “subversive adult Disneyland” is carved into the cliffs of an otherwise unremarkable suburban peninsula. Do not be deceived, however. MONA is a striking, world-class beauty and deceptively intricate facility, up there with your Guggenheims and Tate Moderns. Yes, MONA truly is that remarkable and unique. It’s somehow fitting that something so ill-fitting to Hobart should be benevolently housed here. It’s art for art’s sake and no apologies about it.
A privately funded museum donated by “rabid atheist” billionaire David Walsh, MONA is a pleasant 20-minute ferry ride away from the centre of Hobart. Even better, the ferry itself has been transformed into a floating objet d’art.
The MONA grounds are not simply some mild, or even slavish, replica of a European art gallery plonked in the middle of the Australian bush, either. They are smothered in grape-ripening vineyards and dotted with huge looming silver bark gum trees, while the dedicated art precinct is defiantly postmodern, intriguingly fascinating and delightfully absurd. Hobart had never seen anything quite like MONA before it opened in 2011 and neither has much of the rest of the world.
Along those same lines, the art curated and presented here is thoughtful, challenging, sometimes bizarre but so lovingly curated that just walking through these hallowed halls is a good reminder of why challenging art needs to play a constant role in our lives.
Even better for the gay tourist is that MONA is a big size queen when it comes to degenerate art. Our favourite “hanging” was a life-size
painting of Australian explorers Burke and Wills, naked, with one of them being rimmed by a kangaroo. This was on a huge canvas in full view of children. Now that’s putting it out there and making no excuses.
That fear-no-criticism painting alone is worth the price of admission (around $20), but what is even more thrilling about MONA, and its pushing of the artistic envelope, is how lovingly it has been embraced by the city of Hobart. MONA has quickly become a focal point for artists, wannabe artists and their admirers. With real estate still relatively cheap in the Tasmanian city, Hobart may soon usurp Melbourne as Australia’s boho artistic capital.
You could easily spend a whole day at MONA (and plenty of spare change at the quirky gift shop and restaurant/café) and not be bored, even if you find the idea of viewing art about as interesting as watching paint dry.
Away from MONA, Hobart doesn’t offer too much in the way of gay entertainment. There is one gay bar, Flamingos Dance Bar, open on Friday and Saturday nights, for those who want to experience the glory days of gay bars before mobile apps stole their cruising thunder.
That’s not to say Hobart is gay-unfriendly. My boyfriend and I, along with another gay couple we were travelling with, held hands and cuddled all the way through town, dinner and beyond. There was barely a blink, let alone a “fuck off, poofters!” yelled from a passing 4-wheel drive. Hobart has certainly changed, upped its game and is eyeing the rainbow-striped dollar with a vengeance. This is, lest we forget, the place that gave us one of Australia’s truly great gay men, Dr Bob Brown – from conservationist to green politician to openly gay and happily partnered man-whomade-a-difference.
For a weekend away, Hobart is the perfect place to experience something much less hectic than Sydney or Melbourne. It has that slower pace of Perth and Brisbane, but with its cute cottages and looming Mount Wellington (usually capped with snow), Hobart offers a dramatic city landscape all of its own doing.
Hobart has been busy polishing its appeal to the gay community, no doubt buoyed by the critical and commercial success of MONA. The Lord Mayor of the city, Damon Thomas (an avowed nudist, no less!), apologised to the gay community last year unveiling a public artwork, The Yellow Line, to commemorate the Tasmanian gay community’s long struggle for equality.
If you can draw yourself away from MONA during your getaway, squeeze in a few other days with a visit to Port Arthur recommended due to its eerie colonial >>