THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN
29 January 2005

The people of Childers are determined the victims of the hostel fire in 2000 will be properly remembered, reports Lee Mylne

Upstairs in the former Palace Hotel in the Queensland country town of Childers, a white-haired tourist stands transfixed in front of a large opaque glass wall.

“It’s very sad, isn’t it?” she asks no-one in particular. The bright faces of 15 young people gaze out from glass boxes set into the wall. Over the past two years they’ve smiled out at around 385,000 visitors, but few smile back. This tourist attraction is one to make you weep.

In June 2000, the historic Palace Hotel burned down, taking the lives of 15 young men and women who were staying in the building, then a backpackers’ hostel. Four years later, a moving memorial to them is at the heart of Childers – both literally and emotionally.

Childers, population 2500, is seen as a “half-way house” on the road between Brisbane and Rockhampton, according to the mayor of Isis Shire, Bill Trevor. Its recent notoriety has overshadowed what it was once most known for – well-preserved heritage buildings and a patch-worked landscape of cane fields and farmland.

Small crops – zucchini, avocado, tomatoes, mangos, snow peas – have made the town popular on the international backpacker circuit, creating work for hundreds of young travellers each year at harvest time.

Like many others driving the Isis Highway four hours north of Brisbane, between the sugar towns of Bundaberg and Maryborough, we stop in Childers’ busy main drag, Churchill Street, for lunch. A couple are photographing the imposing front of The Palace, its verandahs adorned with iron lacework. Above the front door is the leadlight window, which miraculously survived the inferno, proclaiming Redmond’s Palace Hotel.

Irishman Malcolm Redmond built the first Palace in 1898. Four years later, it was destroyed by a fire which started in the Grand Hotel and wiped out most of the western side of Churchill Street. When the hotels and shops were rebuilt they were insulated from each other by brick fire walls – the likely saviour of most of the buildings when an arsonist struck almost a century later.

Today, the walls of the rebuilt Palace are adorned with 10 glass boxes which outline the history of the building, its many uses and its clientele. It became a backpacker hostel in 1993.

On the first floor, the area which was once a row of small bedrooms with doors to the wide shady verandah overlooking the street is now a large airy gallery space hosting changing exhibitions by Australian and international artists. Taking up one entire wall of the gallery is a modern, moving and symbolic memorial to the 15 backpackers who died in the 2000 fire. Created by Brisbane artist Sam di Mauro, the frosted glass wall, 7.8 metres long and 2.7 metres high, is back-etched with a subtle line running through it, representing the highway through Isis Shire. Along the line in the places where they last worked, are 15 glass “memory boxes” containing a collage of images, skilfully layered to relate each person’s story and experiences. Each is marked with their name and the flag of their country – Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Ireland, Australia, Morocco, and the UK.

Look closely and you will notice that while most of the memory boxes show the backpackers at various stages of their lives, all the photos of Dutch girl Joly van der Velden were taken in Australia.

“When we asked her family about that, they said ’Joly loved your country so much and we wanted to show that’,” says memorial director Nancy Calder, who still becomes visibly emotional while talking about the project.

Also in permanent pride of place is a large portrait by Josonia Paluitis, titled “Taking a break in the field”. Red dirt clings to the boots and jeans of the 15, their smiles echoing those in the photographs.

At the back of the rebuilt Palace, where vestiges of brick walls show the footprint of the old building, is a new 120-bed hostel, opened in April 2004. Backpackers skylark in the swimming pool and play on the snooker tables in the lounge room. It’s almost surreal after the sombre mood in the gallery.

Childers is a town committed to preserving its history. The Palace fire could have destroyed the town’s tourism industry, but something positive and life-affirming has emerged from the ashes of disaster.

Bill Trevor, mayor of Isis for 11 years, is leading a $3 million redevelopment of Churchill Street. Was the Palace redevelopment the catalyst for this? “Yes,” he says of the building which was sold to the council for $1 after the fire. “We spent $1.7m on The Palace, and it is the main centrepiece for the redevelopment.

“We want people to stop in the town, have lunch and really walk around. We are trying to create things here, rather than waiting for them to happen.”

Work will include new outdoor eating areas, lights in the leopard trees which line the median strip, underground power cables and new footpaths.

Six local artists have created 63 colourful ceramic pavers for Churchill Street’s footpath, depicting the town’s heritage. But the pavement directly outside The Palace will stay unadorned.

Checklist
Childers is about 50km south of Bundaberg, on the Isis Highway. The Palace Memorial & Gallery is part of the Childers Visitor Centre in the Palace Hotel, 72 Churchill Street. It is open weekdays from 9am to 4pm and weekends from 9am to 3pm. Tel: (07) 4126 3886 or (07) 4126 1994.

The new Childers Palace Backpackers, located behind the Palace Hotel, is a 120 bed hostel with air conditioned double, quad and dorm rooms, a resort-style pool, two large communal kitchens, barbecue and beer garden. For more information, (07) 4126 2244, www.childersbackpackers.com.

HERITAGE RENEWAL

When Childers-born Nancy Calder returned in 1987 after many years’ absence, there were 12 empty shops in the main street.

“The council of the time bought the chemist shop and its collection as a catalyst for tourism and within a year there were no empty shops,” she says. Calder stayed to run Australia’s only pharmaceutical museum.

Built in 1894, the Pharmaceutical Museum is one of 28 heritage listed buildings in Childers. Inside, the mirror-backed red cedar shelves are lined with ground glass bottles with gold leaf lettering. There are cedar cabinets with crystal knobs, leather-bound journals and in the dispensary, a dentist’s chair to make you shudder.

The main street is lined with heritage buildings. The Federal Hotel, with its swinging doors and iron lacework, dates to 1907, the butcher shop was built in 1896 and escaped the 1902 fire, then there’s the courthouse, post office, National Bank, RSL Club, Anglican Church, and the Isis Shire Council building, with its Soldiers’ Room Memorial.

In Ashby Lane, just off the main street, is the Military & Memorabilia Museum, which has about 1500 visitors a year. Bursting at the seams with exactly 21,643 items from 140 countries, the collection is a 20-year-old work in progress for Allan Baker. For $5, you can browse through uniforms and memorabilia from the military, police, ambulance, fire brigade, coastguard, SES, Civil Defence and air sea rescue.

Allan is not the only one in Childers with a passion for what he does. Many small attractions show the town’s diversity.

Farmers Anthony and Teena Mammino have turned an old family recipe into an award-winning business, Mammino’s Gourmet Ice Cream. Just down the road is Snakes Downunder, where Ian Jenkins shares 40 years of knowledge and handling of 12 of the world’s most venomous snakes with visitors.

Small wineries are springing up. Stanton Estate was the first, now joined by several others including the Hill of Promise Estate on Mango Hill Drive, where owners Mary and Terry Byrne also run a bed-and-breakfast using renovated canecutters’ cottages with fantastic rural vistas.

Checklist
www.frasercoastholidays.info
www.bundabergregion.info
www.mammino.com.au
www.snakesdownunder.com