Dream Burnie by Justin Heazlewood

Justin Heazlewood and I have a bit in common. It's tempting to make more of this than there really is; because he's talented, witty, poetic, musical, courageous, quite successful and he is really rowing his own boat, artistically. 

The similarities? We're both from Burnie. I also enjoy writing, I am an artist, and I also did not know what a souvlaki was until I left Burnie. 

The differences are;

• I am twelve years older
• I do not have the degree of drive or courage to be original and fully myself that Justin has
• I grew up with two parents who had it together; he was caring for his single mum who had schizophrenia.
• and I went to Burnie Primary/Burnie High while he was Montello Primary/Parklands High. Primaries in Burnie were pretty much similar I reckon but PHS was a much tougher proposition than BHS. I bumped along without ever working anything much out at high school while I feel that across town you had to have a strategy to survive those four years.

If you don't know anything about Burnie it's an industrial town and port on the north west coast of Burnie. It's surrounded by dairy farms and forestry. Burnie's full-employment commodity-exporting days are in the past now, and it is trying to survive on tourism, like everywhere. But… I am not an expert on 2025 Burnie at all. I lived there for 18 years until moving to Hobart for uni in 1986.

I first became aware of Justin around 2005 as a muso and personality on Triple J called The Bedroom Philosopher. He was witty and sophisticated, but employed a genuine understanding of his (our) daggy regional background which he deployed as both a weapon and a shield. I subscribed to his email newsletter and over the years we've corresponded just a bit.

Justin has now written a book called Dream Burnie which is really a physical souvenir of a whole Dream Burnie project. I would describe it as a thorough excavation of the surprising artistic life of Burnie and it's people over the last several decades. 

You can buy a copy here

There are about 30 interviews here with people who grew up or worked in Burnie or were even inspired by Burnie to create art, music, games, films, animations, sculpture and indescribable hybrids of same. There's an anthology of Justin's own work in here. And a scrapbook of great Burnie ephemera that captures that time at the Dawn of Desktop Publishing.

I have only dipped into it until this week (my sister Sally and her husband Matt are featured subjects so I started there). But now I am reading it front to back and it's taken my breath away a couple of times. Nostalgia is a corrosive drug etc yadda yadda but I think a lot of what’s in here should resonate with anyone who feels like the time and place they're in is stifling their voice or clipping their wings.

What Justin demonstrates through his careful sifting of these stories is that our DUMB TOWN, our PAPER MILL PAINT FACTORY WOODCHIP PILE 7BU FOOTBALL town, was and is full of creative and original young thinkers, who could have connected, and sometimes did, to feel like they weren't alone.

There was the Coastal Art Group and rock bands and brass bands and the Musical Society and the Jazz Club and so on – I'm not saying it was a cultural desert. Like Sally, I went to art school in Hobart and so did a dozen of my contemporaries from Burnie and the coast. But it's honestly surprising to me to see the talent and really the word I keep thinking is courage of so many souls who sprang from the chocolatey brown soil of this town. The art pedigree of the joint outdoes the football pedigree to be honest.

If you are Tasmanian you will have likely encountered the Dream Burnie roadshow by now. He's been pretty brash and he's not just quietly hoping the books sell themselves. I may have thought "Come on mate give it a rest" once or twice. But it's a bloody good book, I am very glad to have got my hands on one and I might even write a part 2 to this rave review rave once I have read it entirely.

Now I have to drop him a line and ask if he pinched my Cooee Cordials logo artwork because I am pretty sure he did.

A break for a week by a lake

Two years on from our extended-family holiday at Swansea, The four of us and Imp, Ed, Karri and Miah did it again, this time a week at Sisters Beach on the NW coast. Our house was actually at Lake Llewellyn 2km back from Sisters, but very handy to that beach and to Boat Harbour as well – Australia’s Most Beautiful Drive-Up Beach (Wineglass Bay probably has the overall top spot sewn up but you need to walk or sail there).

This was an important family get-together as Marcus’ departure for Hong Kong gets closer, currently booked for March 10. The cousins all get on well, and they spent the week sharing a small bunk room. For various reasons we had four cars between the eight of us, so that meant we could go in a few different directions at once although we did spend most of the week all together. The house is called Platypus Chalet, it’s on Airbnb and we recommend it.

Disclaimer: we understand short term rental operations play a part in the Tasmanian housing crisis. Our host only has one house not ten, and it's a purpose-built holiday house, so I feel like it's kosher.

Our place was one of about 25 at the lake, I think the only one without water frontage. A neighbour suggested to us a good way to get down to the water (but that information is classified). The lake was man-made in the 60s or 70s, it seems mostly for watersports enthusiasts. We swam in it and paddled our wave ski on it every day. One day Elf was paddling while Imp swam alongside and they encountered two platypus! Imp was a bit concerned about the famous poison spur but everyone kept their distance and played nice. I was on the bank as they came back in. Imp had run out of swimming energy so she had hung from the back of the wave ski for a while. Then Elf got a bad cramp so Imp propelled them back to shore. What a pair.

A paddle around Lake Llewellyn

The high side of the lake bank (3rd pic above) looks at first glance like impenetrable virgin bush, but the road to Sisters Beach is right there. So occasionally the Castaway vibe is shattered by very mundane vehicles cruising through on the sealed road. This road has no footpath, and a 100kmh speed limit, but there are ‘Shared Road’ in a few places. If I was in charge of a road and I wanted drivers to share it with pedestrians and horse riders I'd probably make it 60, not 100. Imp and Ed have been here before and walked down this road, so they were happy to do so again. But it scares the pants off me as a pedestrian. One day the rest of us drove to Boat Harbour and Imp and Ed walked this road to Sisters Beach then walked along the coast to meet us. They are quite outward bound compared to us.

Mum and Dad used to own a block on the beachfront at Sisters, with plans to build on it. It was a very fast growing area in the early 00s and then there was a moratorium on new building for a while – they ended up selling the block and moving east to Turners Beach, and then later to Hobart. The house that has been built on the old block is … disappointing.

Around the Sisters Beach township. Middle pic is an amazing place next to Mum & Dad's old block built by a boatbuilder. The pic above is just a classic old shack, before people started proper real solid houses here.

We had a day trip to Stanley to climb The Nut. In a shed at the top there was an interpretative panel with various loose theories about how The Nut got its name. Then it mentions in passing that the palawa name for it is moo-nut-re-ker which seems to me like probably the source. I had never heard this name before. 

The amazing views from The Nut. 

Michael's 19th birthday fell on day 3 of 7, so we took his gifts up with us. We gave him a fairly good metal detector; more news on that once he has taken it for a spin. We had lunch for his birthday in Wynyard at The Vault, a great spot overlooking the river operating in an old bank.

We had heaps of trips to the various beaches. We flopped about the house and did a lot of reading. We got in and out of the lake and the spa tub. We watched old movies and TV shows in the extensive DVD collection. The kids had a Friday night out in Wynyard which was uneventful. I had a day prowling around my old home town of Burnie, and a walk on my own down to Boat Harbour, but I'll do seperate posts for those.

Above is Sisters Beach. A lovely place to swim, I had forgotten the water was so clear.
It’s surrounded by Rocky Cape National Park.
The pics below are Boat Harbour. It was a very calm day so Elf joined us.
I had not forgotten the clear water here; the sand is pure white and
it's just a joy to behold. There were white fish swimming around in the shallows.

At Ed's suggestion we also did a trip to Dip Falls, a spectacular spot 40 mins south of Stanley. It's the middle of nowhere but we all enjoyed it.

The four kids spent most of their time together and had a ball. [As I write a couple of weeks later write the same crew have just come back from a 5 hour walk on Mt Wellington]. They shared a bunk room and they were in the hot tub together every day. They decided to have a night out in Wynyard on our last night at the house. They rang to be picked up fairly early; as there was not all that much happening and they themselves were the main attraction in town.

On our last day we did a big clean up then set off in dribs and drabs in the four cars. The kids had two cars but wanted to travel down all together to enjoy the Hottest 100 on the radio, which is cute. So I took our car and Elf drove Marcus's. She was keen to just get home while I had some diversions planned.

I had another swim at Burnie; this time the beach was pretty grotty, as it as was the day after Australia Day. I did a walk around the CBD and pondered what used to be in various locations back in 1982 or whatever. The closeness of the beach to the town centre is something I mention every time Burnie comes up - but there can't be many places where you could buy a boogie board at K-mart then walk two blocks to the surf club and paddle out.

It was a beaut day for driving. After the swim and walk I drove to Launceston and caught up with Joe who is just back from a soccer camp with William in the UK, which was a big success. William is on course to be soccer professional. 

Lovely old deco Gospel Hall in Launceston next to Du Cane Brewery

Then I went across town and saw Lynn and Scott and heard all their news - they are both teaching at country schools now - Lynn is principal at Westbury and Scott is at Hagley.

Then the drive home from Launceston was mostly uneventful.

1 Malunna Crescent - the front yard and the street

These are all my memories of the house we grew up in. I lived there from about 3 months old to just before I turned 18. Mum and Dad sold it in 2000 or 2001, and this what it looked like in 2010.

We always had two cars in the driveway. Dad had a white Kingswood HR wagon with red upholstery called Humphrey, and mum had a white Fiat 124 called Giuseppe that had belonged to dad’s father Didds. Later Dad bought a new yellow Fiat 128 called Sophia which arrived on a ship at the Port of Burnie, that was around 1975. By 1985 Dad had a dark blue Datsun 260C, unnamed. Mum later sold the white Fiat and regretted it. I drove it a bit on my Ls and I loved it. It had old-fashioned H-harness seatbelts in the back, and on the dashboard a squashy trilby-hat shaped rubber thing to squeeze to spray water onto the windscreen for the wipers.

We crammed into Sophia for regular one-day round trips to Launceston to see dad’s mum Ibey, and for him to mow the lawn and pick fruit. We occasionally stayed overnight but it was nearly always up-and-back. Dad had a St Christopher medal stuck to the dash. It seemed to work, we survived all those trips.

The Wescombes lived to our left and the Westbrooks to our right. The Wescombes had a line of dark trees much higher than in the photo above, on the north side of us: so our driveway was mostly a dark spot. Our lawn was split in half by a short concrete front path. The sloping left half was always spattered with gumtree detritus and quite mossy as it was overshadowed by a very big spinning gum. This was a great climbing tree but we needed a stool or a ladder to get started. You could sit up there quietly and people would pass below you, unbeknownst.

We had a fire hydrant in our driveway, and quite often in summer we had a fire engine parked there using it. The grounds of Marist college would mysteriously catch fire regularly.

We originally had a white timber rail fence, and I think I remember a front gate. But they went at some stage. We had dogs but they were kept in the back yard. Later the big gum become dangerous so it was cut down and mulched. 

The flat right half of the front lawn had a camellia growing in the middle of it. I grew up thinking of this as the 'mulberry bush', because we went round and round it. All it was good for was going round and round.

There was a "pebble garden" along in front of the house, sloping up to the front door. We had a piece of driftwood in it that looked like a seal. And red/pink fuschias with sweet nectar. It was originally very stark and low-maintenance but became more "planty" as years went by. There were two steps up to our small front porch which was held up by a square post with a healthy jasmine growing around it. Our front door was quite distinctive, it was dark green with three portholes in it.

I played cricket alone on the front path, with a “superball” - hard compressed rubber, very bouncy. I'd bowl it at the step, trying to get it to bounce back to me so I could take spectacular return catches, falling away down the slope to the left. Quite often I pitched it wrong so it would miss the steps and bash into the screen door. Quite often. Bash…bash… … …… bash.

I also would stand on the nature strip by the telegraph pole (imaginary stumps), throw a ball in the air and heave it to the legside, across the street into or over Gilmores’ front fence. My score advanced only by 4s or 6s.

At one time our front path had standard roses down each side. The tree shading the nature strip in the photo above might be one that mum planted which I remember as a liquidambar (but I know very little about trees). There were no trees then on our nature strip or further up to the right either; nature meant strictly "grass". We rode bikes and scooters down nature strip unencumbered, and also had thrilling sprint races complete with a handicapping system orchestrated by my friend Macca (his dad trained professional runners). Between our house and the Tolunah St corner were a silver birch and a woolly-barked red flowering gum.

For the record the neighbours going up the hill on our side after the Westbrooks were the Kellys, the Fords, then Hardings, then Murfett's until they moved across the road. Up the top on the bend were the Beaches and the Millars (including my soccer coach and music teacher Gordon). I thought of Mr Ford this morning – he had a very generous wave. I think he had survived a heart attack and seemed to be determined to spread happiness in his small way when he had an opportunity. 

At one stage I had a friend at kindergarten named Elizabeth, and she lived around on the other side of the block, in Paraka Street. One day we discovered a shortcut between our houses but it required going down the Ford's driveway and through a little hatch in their back fence.

Directly across from us were the Reardons (Mr Reardon gave me a chest expander) but they moved out and were replaced by the Boss-Walkers. Up from them were the Gilmores, then Murfetts and a bit further up a fascinating man we think was a retired seaman – with many chickens. He had long black hair, was quite weatherbeaten and I think had a dog who matched his hair. Pippa escaped and caught one of his chickens once and mum had to return it to him, deceased.

When I started primary school, the Waterfall bus stopped right in front of our house, and it cost 5¢. This shortly went up to 7¢, which meant there was double the chance of losing a coin and having to go and ring the doorbell while panicking the bus would come. The route changed later so our nearest stop was around in Paraka Street.

Macca and I played footy and cricket on the street. It was very quiet except at the end of the school day, as Marist College is just behind the houses across the road from us. We would have a crate for wickets and pick up and move when a car came. I remember at least once we were kicking end to end and talking about god knows what (probably cricket gloves or bats or footy cards) after the street lights came on. Which seemed very grown up.

I had a scooter but didn't have a bike until turned 9. I don't think I ever went too far in the scooter years, although I remember riding it down the steep and sweeping grassy hills around the Marist football ground. Coming down the nature strip, Ford’s driveway created a bit of a lip you could get a decent jump off.

I was intimately familiar with my grassy side of the street and all the driveways that crossed it; but also every paver on the other side, and where drains lay in wait to take a tennis ball. You could heave off the drain cover to make a daring rescue in some cases, but not all. If I had gone on Mastermind in 1976, my special subject would have been the surfaces of Malunna Crescent under my feet. I looked down a lot.

This is not our Kingswood but these pics do spark up some memories.

A StreetView walk around Cooee, in ten parts

On a slow day at work, I got onto Google StreetView for a look around Cooee.
It must have been an outlying village at one time but is now an outer suburb of Burnie.
I grew up in Burnie and went to high school in Cooee. I walked up and down
the highway between the two countless times. It's very pretty in a way
that really didn't impress me at the time, I don't think.

St David's Anglican church, Poke St.
Dad usually went to church at St George's in Burnie
but sometimes came out here.
Looks like it's for sale now.

Was this once Ted Eustace (Ted Useless) Motors? It looks haunted.
It seems amazing to me now, how much we took the
ever-present backdrop of the sea for granted. 

Cooee Railway Station? Or just a siding?

Above and below: site of the Cooee Saleyards

Above and below: Cooee Saleyards 1953, from Tas Archives.
I came here once with my mate Macca and his father.
I don't think I'd ever seen livestock close up, and was quite alarmed
at the way the cows just wandered around casually shitting everywhere.
Dogs are more embarrassed and apologetic. 

This was a watershed in Cooee development, a 2-storey servo!
As I recall it was the project of Burnie's only millionaire, Lloyd Bonney.
Now looks like it's a medical centre or something.

Cooee Point looking over to Table Cape.
My high school friend Daffy lived in this street, I can't place his house now.
Between his back fence and the rocks ran the railway line.
He had an air rifle and it was my first firearm experience, shooting cans.

A house in Saundridge Rd, near the high school.
This was my route walking and sometime riding to school,
although we were probably dropped off by Dad more often.

Rev's shop across the road from Burnie High.
Sold chips to generations of spotty teenagers.
According to Jacki, Mr Rev applied the cooking oil to his hair.
Any suggestions what the ghost sign says?

I used to be in the Burnie Municipal Band
and we had a fundraising dance here one year.
All I remember is my stint taking money on the door
while studying for a 20th Century History exam.

The former Les Clark Oval. Our school athletics carnivals were here,
and this is where I did Little Athletics. I remember an epic high jump head-to-head
that went on and on as it got darker and darker until someone missed their jump,
probably me. The grandstand is now demolished and half of the oval
sealed for the car park, other half now a bowls club.
I only discovered this today.