For many grey nomads, learning all about Australia’s rich and rugged history is one of the highlights of the Big Lap.
However, the cost of maintaining and preserving the heritage sites so beloved by travellers is absolutely huge.
In Tasmania, which has the highest concentration of heritage sites in Australia, a backlog of maintenance works is growing ever longer.
“Anyone that owns a heritage site knows that you just keep throwing buckets of money at it and that’s just the nature of the beast,” Matthew Smithies of the National Trust told the ABC. “We’ve got about $3.5 million worth of conservation works that we need to carry out immediately, and raising that funding is difficult.”
He pointed to Clarendon House, in the north of the state, which has problems including crumbling walls and a wonky staircase, and a cracked basement … and is in desperate need of restoration.
The National Trust says that, due to limited funding, maintainers of heritage sites within the state have to decide which assets should be maintained. It is a challenge for people who are custodians of heritage, both the private and public sectors.
“At this stage, we haven’t lost any heritage assets,” Mr Smithies said. “We’re holding them together with sticky tape and glue.”
He said a bigger discussion needs to be had around how heritage assets can be kept standing, arguing you can’t put a price on heritage.
“It’s what makes towns and cities and villages different from one another,” he told the ABC.
This article seems to deal with post colonial sites. Surely the pre colonial sites need more urgent attention as they have been both neglected and actively destroyed in the past.
I find it overwhelmingly disappointing that most localities ignore tens of thousands of years to grandise settlers who often simply adapted previous practices for example the Whales at Eden NSW!
Let’s face facts. The Tasmanian Government have no money for this type of infrastructure. Unfortunately the Greens (Bob Brown & his crew) systematically ruined Tasmania over the past 20+ years. Little or no progress is allowed in Tassie. Shame, great place to visit, hopeless place to work or live and without tourist dollars, it will only get worse.