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Tourism in Cairns: image and product.

Article Excerpt
Many a tourist-guide author has pondered the attractions of the Cairns region in colourful prose, seeking to entice the prospective visitor with images of an exotic and adventurous place that is also familiar and well developed enough to assure the visitors' comfort. The dual nature of these images is echoed in the places the authors seek to promote. From the 1880s to 1970s, Cairns relied on natural attractions, which were served by either temporary structures fitting prevalent romantic ideas for those types of localities, or prosaic buildings which differed little from those used by locals for their own recreation. Throughout the period, travellers were searching for the tropical, the exotic, the picturesque and the romantic. These concepts were shaped by myths and fantasies portrayed in western European art and literature, and scientific advances from the 1930s onwards. It was therefore the natural, rather than the built environment that embodied these ideas and fantasies. However, the average tourist also looked for tea and scones and decent hotels. These were provided through infrastructure built for other industries, which paradoxically threatened the natural values the tourists came to see.

With the exception of Kate Hartig's analysis of the early images of the Blue Mountains, there are few histories of how Australian tourism landscapes are constructed at a regional level, or of the resulting changes to the cultural landscape. (1) This paper identifies the characteristics of the Cairns tourism cultural landscape for the period 1890 to 1970, and the way it has been imagined and represented over time. It traces the physical impact of the concepts outlined above and the way in which changes in these concepts have been reflected in the region's attractions.

The image

Early travellers and tourists came with preconceived ideas and images of what a 'tropical landscape' should be. A tropical landscape is very different from landscapes of the temperate zones: it looks, sounds and smells different. Emerging during the eighteenth century alongside European colonisation, the idea of tropical landscapes was extensively portrayed in literature, travel literature, art and photographs. These landscapes were highly evocative for many travellers, stimulating emotions ranging from sheer delight to melancholy. The jungle's green abundance could fascinate as well as repel, as it exercised its influence over the imagination.

Cairns appealed to nineteenth-century romantic tastes because of its dramatic landscapes, its waterfalls that range from awe-inspiring to delicate and fairy-like, and its coral gardens. (2) Travellers were seeking the picturesque, and the Cairns region was able to provide many aesthetically pleasing scenes. The vice-Consul of Czechoslovakia was enthusiastic in his praise of the region:

from the point of view of beauty, this district of yours is the pearl of Australia ... Cairns and its hinterland ... was marvelously fortunate in its gift of such wondrous vegetation. Such rich and fresh green colourings and beautiful shades were to be found in no other part of Australia, and the beauty of the landscapes was quite comparable to the glory of the mountains of Switzerland ... here were beautiful mountains and forests, luxuriant tropical vegetation, beautiful lakes, exquisite seascapes, majestic waterfalls, gorgeous panoramic views seen from the railways and roads of the ranges, and the wonders of the Great Barrier Reef ... (3)

A number of attractions elicited startling prose as writers sought to understand the 'numinous,' the indescribable found in 'awful, grand and sublime' landscapes. (4) The 'weird' and unusual landscape of Chillagoe attracted the attention of E J Brady as he imagined grotesque creatures among the limestone bluffs:

to terrify invaders, the genii of this haunted region have carved uncouth monsters out of stone and set them down in diverse lonesome places. One sees gigantic toads squatted at the feet of mountains of pebbles; enormous elephants-stonily browsing in groves of stunted eucalypts--hornless buffaloes, precariously placed on cliffs of desert sandstone ... semblances of living shapes, which cumbered the reeking Earth when yellow Chillagoe metal was being fused into molten quartz,...

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