As with many elements of Hobart’s cultural scene, the main reason the Odeon is still standing is David Walsh. The Tasmanian multimillionaire professional gambler and art collector behind the Museum of New and Old Art has a lot of money and he likes to support the arts in his home town. But the music venue, with its unpolished, retro vibe and excellent acoustics, has seen periods of both immense popularity and times of financial woe in its 108 years.
The Odeon’s story starts when it was known as The Strand, a state-of-the-art picture theatre built in 1916 to keep up with the Joneses on the mainland after Federation. Funded by Tasmanian merchant EJ Miller, who made his money mining on the west coast, The Strand “combined all the best features of theatres in Europe and America,” says Stefan Petrow, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Tasmania.
“The mayor at the time [LH McLeod] said it was undoubtedly the finest building in Tasmania and probably the finest of its kind in Australasia,” he says. “This is some 15 years after Federation, which probably introduced an element of competition, more so than when we were all separate colonies.”
The Strand remained successful until television arrived. The ABC bought the building in 1970 to 2001. During much of that time, the Odeon was home to the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, then in 2001 it was sold to a modern Pentecostal church, who used the space until 2009 when developer Riverlee bought it.
It then went dormant.
By 2014, the building was so forgotten that when organisers of Mona’s winter festival, Dark Mofo, scoured the city for unused spaces and chose the Odeon for a Queens of the Stone Age gig, Tasmania’s own Examiner newspaper called it “relatively unknown”.
These days it’s an award-winning major player in the local scene and the live music hub for every Dark Mofo festival since, hosting sold-out shows by the likes of Bloc Party, The Dead South, Amy Shark, Antony and the Johnsons, Damien Rice and Paul Kelly.
In 2015, Hobart city council approved Riverlee’s development application to transform the Odeon and the surrounding buildings into a $69m 11-story office tower with shops, restaurants and car parking.
Leigh Carmichael, creative director of DarkLab (the creative agency formed with Walsh in 2016 to drive creative projects outside Mona) and former creative director of Dark Mofo, said the Odeon was almost lost.
“It was very, very close,” he says. “They could have brought the bulldozers in at any time.
“It had become really central to the festival: we’ve used it every year, and we’ve done hundreds of gigs. So we started to campaign to try and stop it being demolished. We struck up a conversation with Riverlee, and they were like, ‘look, it’s a really valuable space, it’s a lot of land, it’s worth a lot more to us down than it is up …’”
But instead of a conflict between a developer and an arts festival, Riverlee and DarkLab decided to collaborate to create a new future for the Odeon.
“We definitely left something on the table,” says David Lee, development director of Riverlee, of how much money was lost in making that choice. “We could have proceeded and replaced the Odeon with a commercial building. We had planning approval and planning support for it, but not the social support … it’s definitely unconventional, but we just loved the idea of working with DarkLab.”
Together, they opened In The Hanging Garden in 2019. Encompassing nearly the entire city block, it’s a mixed use precinct that includes the Odeon, an open air bar and retail.
Then came Covid.
Kimberley Galceran, DarkLab’s music director, books bands for the Odeon. She came on board in 2020, a year where the Odeon held only four gigs. In 2021 it hosted seven.
“It was a real struggle,” says Galceran. “We still had to make certain payments and pay rent on our sound system and things like that. So it was a tough time.”
“Into 2022, we were kind of back to 2019 numbers, but they still weren’t the same quality of events that we’d had previously. In the last year, we have had internationals coming back and the numbers have picked up. We’ve already got more than that figure booked for 2024, so it should double next year.”
Hobart’s own Courtney Barnett played at the Odeon for the very first time during this year’s Mona Foma, Mona’s summer festival. Galceron was there: “She was on stage and she looked around and said ‘I’ve never played here before and this is just such a wonderful theatre!’
“We do hear that a lot from artists, there’s something about the space and the age of it that people really love. The seats are a bit wonky, they’re not super comfortable. But it has a lot of character that I think people still appreciate. It’s not all clean and white and grey. It’s falling apart a bit. But it sounds great in there.”
Riverlee and DarkLab have a master plan for In The Hanging Garden that includes restoring the Odeon’s auditorium and adding on a 15-story hotel. DarkLab now owns 50% of the precinct, which Carmichael says is a relief, if hard to justify on paper.
“It’s a lot easier to feel confident when you’re actually in control,” he said. “I am optimistic about this space. But it is really hard. Without the generosity of David we would have had to bail out years ago: he’s underpinned the Odeon costs and losses every year as we’ve been leasing it … I’m sure other venues around Australia have the same issues, that’s why lots of them have been demolished, because apartments and hotels are worth a lot more.””
He remains hopeful that the Odeon will be able to host enough shows to secure its future, saying 100-150 gigs a year “would make it a feasible exercise”.
“I think the most important part for us was to save it from being knocked down,” he says. “For now, at least, it’s pretty safe.”
This is part of a new series turning the spotlight on the best live music venues around Australia. What’s your favourite? Let us know here and we’ll share your stories and memories.
