Rex Jory: Sculpture park could be just the thing Granite Island needs

GRANITE Island is in desperate decline, writes Rex Jory — but a plan put forward a year ago could be the fix it needs. So why has nothing been done?

The horse-drawn tram heads away from Granite Island. Picture: Mike Burton

• Rex Jory: Granite Island now a decaying white dinosaur
• Scott Hicks’ grand plan for Granite Island
• Granite Island sculpture trail opens
• The Granite Island of South Australia’s past

FIFTEEN months ago, I wrote a stinging criticism of Granite Island in Victor Harbor.

The island was a disgrace, I wrote. It had become “a white elephant, a throwback to a more leisurely, less demanding form of tourism”.

Visitors will, at best be disappointed at the island and at worst horrified at its decline.

Because the local council and the State Government don’t have the resources, nor the will, to upgrade Granite Island I suggested discrete areas of the island should be turned over to private developers for housing and other limited commercial activities.

I returned to Granite Island last week. Not a white seagull dropping has changed. It remains the same bleak, dusty and inhospitable dinosaur it was 15 months ago.

It’s a delightful horse-tram ride to nowhere.

After my column in January, 2017, a potential and unexpected white knight appeared.

Film director Scott Hicks revealed a detailed plan — prepared by artist Will Hendricks — to develop Granite Island.

Will Hendriks and film director Scott Hicks have a plan for a sculpture park at Granite Island. Picture: Bianca De Marchi

The professionally prepared proposal suggests Granite Island could become a sculpture park.

The Hendricks plan states the bleeding obvious: “The island is currently in poor condition owing to state government neglect and local government disregard.”

The sculpture park proposal was presented to both the Victor Harbor Council and the State Government nearly 30 years ago, but was “not advanced further then.”

The plan visualises a 70km sculpture drive through the Fleurieu region, ending at the Granite Island Sculpture Park.

Contemporary buildings, at the start of the island’s breakwater and visible from Victor Harbor, would house artworks and convention facilities.

The plan says “the natural environment will serve as a backdrop to an ever-changing turnover of sculptural work by noted sculptors and artists who will have the opportunity to exhibit on allocated areas set within the reserve. This has world-class potential,” it says.

The plan is ambitious. It would stimulate and reinvigorate not only Granite Island and Victor Harbor but the entire Fleurieu Peninsula. It has the potential to rival Hobart’s controversial MONA gallery.

Scott Hicks was bubbling with enthusiasm for the scheme. But, as is so often the case, nothing has happened.

Granite Island remains a wasteland, wrapped in red tape by environmentalists who claim it should be left as it was.

The plan for a sculpture park on the island may not be the perfect solution. But it is the perfect starting point for a debate about Granite Island.

Granite Island is in the Liberal stronghold seat of Finniss. There was little political appetite for the previous government to invest in the area. But the Liberal win at the March election will change priorities.

For many older people, Granite Island retains memories of quaint seaside holidays — fish and chips, picnics and paddling in rock pools. But for younger people — the new tourists — those days are gone.

Let’s do something to drag Granite Island in to the 2020s.