Hobartians argued with such intensity about where the University of Tasmania should go that, in late 1944, while the world focused its attention on momentous campaigns in Europe and the Pacific, Ned Kelly (more about him later) wrote to the Mercury in Hobart to air his views about a proposal to grant 125 acres of the Domain to the university. He was dead against it.
The saga of the university’s Hobart situation is a long and decidedly Hobartian one, with more than a whiff of the mountain cable car about it. After all, it took considerably longer to decide whether to move the university from Domain House near the city to a former rifle range in suburban Sandy Bay than it took the Allies to win World War II.
By the time the university, established in 1890, was 30-something years old, it needed to move, or expand. The parental home, a former school, was no longer big enough or fit for modern purpose. Discussion about possible moves earnestly got underway during the 1920s. Meanwhile, the university endured in buildings that, despite occasional modifications, were by 1937 admitted by the university’s governing council as being “totally inadequate for present day needs”.
Negotiations involved federal, state and city governments, focusing minds and opinions that were big, medium and small. The option to put the university on the former Sandy Bay rifle range was an early contender, despite this land being originally scheduled for transformation into housing and public parkland. The other main option was some form of expansion on Hobart’s Domain, where reserved bush offered another tempting site. Sandy Bay ultimately won out and so, after World War II was finished, the university moved there.
Recently, prompted by changing times and a familiar if somewhat ironic process of structural dilapidation, most of the university in Hobart has moved back closer to its original home. Within a few years the former rifle range will finally be put to its intended use as housing and parkland. Probably.
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Current moves aside, there is a curious cultural history of Hobart in this story which lies beyond just the “what happened” of yesteryear. It abides in the inked assertions of “what should/shouldn’t happen”, which were penned by the opinionated folk of arguments past. After all, like the present shift back towards the city, that initial move into Sandy Bay was not without considerable public controversy.
Ned Kelly was probably the most infamous correspondent on this issue. By using this non-de-plume, the author of that letter styled themselves, a touch hyperbolically, as a sort of defender of Hobart’s citizens and their liberties. Most other letters to the editor of the Mercury on this topic were focused on less abstract concerns. Writing in early 1945, Colin Philp wanted to make sure that the development of Sandy Bay provided for the fixing of roads and the absence of fences, for instance. Another correspondent, in September 1945, was worried about dogs on ovals and wanted the university to construct its sporting oval before any buildings. In short, people tended to bring their very particular wants to bear on this issue, not all of which were related to education.
Of these, one issue really stands out. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Hobart was enduring a housing crisis. The housing issue was therefore inflected in how several writers perceived the prospective move of the university. “To cater in weatherboard hutments for the intellectual advancement of university students,” wrote DC Jacob in May, 1946, “and to withhold the physical comfort of even temporary decent living quarters, is to display a short-sighted and unfair regard for the community as a whole.” M. Ankertell took the opportunity of the debate to point out that it was cruel to keep land reserved “while homes are so badly needed”. An “Old Glebebite” shared a similar sentiment in 1949, asking, “If the university can have the land on the Domain, why cannot the public have other parts to build houses on?”
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In early 1949, more than a decade after serious Sandy Bay talk began, the idea of a Domain campus had remerged. This prompted Hobart’s correspondents to get their pens out and their opinions published again. Many sporting enthusiasts objected to the Domain idea because they were understandably worried about the future of existing Domain facilities. But not everyone agreed with this objection. A writer initialled CSR questioned whether sport should be the sole determinant, asking, “Are we to allow the trend in Australia of sport to stand in the light of the education of our sons and daughters?”
Rather curiously, in the context of opposing the Domain option, one old correspondent briefly reminisced about circuses past. While of little immediate import to present and future discussions, this fleeting allusion to tents and tigers was perhaps the most telling comment of all. It reveals that nostalgia for good times long gone at least sometimes helped form the opinions of the letter-writing community.
But while the debate was often more emotional than intellectual, memory was not allowed to trump historical facts without the occasional factual riposte. At one point a former University of Tasmania’s Vice-Chancellor, E. Morris Miller, took the opportunity presented by the hubbub to remind the public that Hobart’s city council was reaping the whirlwind of its own prior inaction. He noted that Hobart’s City Council had squandered an earlier opportunity to acquire and develop the rifle range. Miller suggested that the resuscitated Domain option was a political distraction. “It seems that the council is endeavouring to cover up its failures,” he said, rather bluntly.
Once more the debate largely passed from the pages of the papers, whose correspondents moved on to other concerns like the threat posed by communists in the university staffroom. The state of any staffroom, lecture theatre or ablution facilities, and their potential explanation for the exploration of revolutionary options within the university community, seemed not to trouble the usual correspondents.
Debate kicked off again in early 1954 when a rumoured Domain option once again agitated the public. This time, however, it was the anti-Sandy Bay crowd who were quick off the mark. Cyclops, of Sandy Bay was jubilant that the Domain was back in contention because the Sandy Bay option had “not one redeeming feature, except to spoil what could be another delightful park”. Unluckily for Cyclops, however, the Domain option was now just an idle rumour. The formal Sandy Bay development finally went ahead later that year.
Yet even then the move to Sandy Bay attracted complaint. After the original designs were printed in the Mercury, a resident of Blackman’s Bay was horrified, calling the design “the most regressive step ever taken in Tasmanian architecture”. But lest posterity be led to believe that in 1954 the debate finally moved on from “where to move” to “what to build”, a diehard wrote to the Mercury with an opinion that went against decades of argumentation, planning, and the raw facts on the ground. They still liked the Domain option.
Nick Brodie is a professional history nerd, based in Hobart. He is the author of several popular history books, including The Vandemonian War, Under Fire and 1787: The Lost Chapters of Australia's Beginnings, which all have substantial Tasmanian content. Appearing regularly on ABC television and radio as a historical and current affairs commentator, Nick is one of Australia's most recognisable millennial historians.
