For the last thirty years I have had a very personal connection with TMAG. For ten years I was a staff member working in the galleries and also in admin. During this time I also became a volunteer tour guide. I retired in 2007, but continued volunteering as a tour guide and also working once a week with the Cultural Heritage staff at Rosny, the Museum’s Collection and Research Centre. After almost 29 years, at the end of last year I reluctantly retired from tour guiding, at nearly 84, I didn’t quite have the energy needed. However, I continue to volunteer at Rosny.
I have been in a very unique position to work with staff, engage with the mostly international and interstate visitors enthralled with what we have to offer and to also join with the dedicated volunteers who work across the museum’s many diverse areas, in assisting staff with the remarkable work they do for all of us. It is always a joy to have fellow Tasmanians join the museum tours, often confessing they haven’t visited since schooldays and then being amazed at what they now see. Comments included being so reassured we still have items they remember from those all-important school visits, but also today’s presentation of what the museum does.
Saturdays were usually my tour guiding day, always interesting to see the pattern of what many visitors do. So often they would have been to MONA, or were planning to visit on the Sunday if they were just in Hobart for the weekend. Saturdays were devoted to enjoying Salamanca Market in the morning and TMAG in the afternoon. Over the years, engaging with visitors, it was always interesting to note the MONA effect. Many interstate visitors commented they’d come to Hobart in the early years of MONA, just to have that experience, but visiting TMAG was also included, as much for contrast as any other reason. Repeat visits often also included ‘this time we’re visiting other places in Tasmania’, underlining the importance of cultural heritage.
How often do you visit TMAG, especially in a private capacity? Have you been to the Herbarium? Do you even know where it’s located? It is also under the TMAG umbrella, but located at UTAS, Sandy Bay. It is not open to the public, but visits can be arranged and seeing the extraordinary work conducted there, is just amazing. The small staff are assisted by dedicated volunteers, taking care of the significant collection, but also doing world leading science and research.
There have been many budget restraints during my thirty years of close connection with TMAG and I have observed first hand, the devastating effect this has had on the staff and indeed visitors too. From being open to the public seven days a week, closed Christmas Day, Good Friday and ANZAC Day, this has been reduced to six days per week and closing at 4.00 pm each day, instead of 5.00 pm. The loss of this hour alone, especially during the peak tourist season, has been a huge disappointment to so many. I wish you could witness what I would see on my Saturday tour guiding days, family groups and individuals being turned away because of the closing restrictions of 4.00 pm.
I am once again appalled by the intended cuts to staff in this present climate. This is a totally unacceptable way to treat the highly qualified and gifted staff, who promote and take care of our State collections, many of them working with unique skills in specific areas and working alone, but when their work is denied and the position disappears, we are all the losers. TMAG’s standing and indeed Tasmania’s, in so many areas of important research, risk being damaged irreparably. Likewise, this state’s education system, where the curriculum is enhanced by regular school visits, thanks to the very few dedicated and professional staff, who are responsible for these visits.
During the decades of tour guiding I have done, one example of change and the importance of it, has been in the interpretation of our indigenous culture and history. When I first began guiding, the ‘aboriginal’ gallery was always of great interest, but told a story from a colonial and European perspective, with comments from visitors at the time, often being simply ignorant, ill informed and frankly, shameful. Thankfully this has changed and I wish you could observe – and indeed the aboriginal community too – the very real thirst most visitors today have for knowing more and more about what really happened here and especially the contemporary history as told in the present gallery ‘Ningina Tunapri’ on the ground floor. The title means to give knowledge and understanding. Have you ever visited the top floor of the 1824 Bond Store? From 2013, this installation tells a very challenging and immersive story.
On occasions when we have been able to design a specific tour for visitors, to meet their individual interests, sometimes it might be just colonial art, or dinosaurs if children were included or the thylacine or Tasmanian Devil. However, sometimes with restricted time, visitors would ask for a tour giving just our indigenous history. The other popular gallery was “Islands to Ice”, exploring everything to the south of Tasmania, covering the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. However, for most visitors they would leave being amazed by the sheer complexity and diversity of what we are able to show. This is all now under threat.
TMAG is unique in occupying such an historical site, important in pre colonial years for the first Tasmanians, and important still today in the story it tells. Three of the buildings on site, predate Port Arthur. They are the Commissariat Store, the Private Secretary’s Cottage and the Bond Store. We are unique in being the holders of the State Collection across all disciplines. The staff taking care of this need to be shown more respect and the institution itself should not suffer any more cuts and such an appalling and restricted budget. There is the capacity to do so much more and to tell a bigger story, but resources are needed, not depleted. The human cost of the current proposal is one thing, but the ongoing decline because of it, is reprehensible.
Surely you can find another solution? Perhaps go and visit TMAG and see for yourself.
Judith Longhurst,
Sandy Bay