Tim Lloyd: The Adelaide Festival is bringing back the Grand Palais floating on the Torrens
WE’ve had Red Squares on the Torrens Parade Ground, Persian Gardens at the Amphitheatre, but the Grand Palais on the Torrens will take the Adelaide Festival right back into our history.
WE have had Red Squares on the Torrens Parade Ground, Accordionistas on the Festival Plaza and Persian Gardens at the Amphitheatre, but the Grand Palais floating on the Torrens will take the Adelaide Festival right back into our history.
The venue and social hub for the 2017, ’18 and ’19 Festivals will relive the gaiety of the most exciting dance hall of 1920s Adelaide.
Unlike the Great Depression, which closed out the 1920s with a grinding fizzle of economic collapse, the Floating Palais went out with a bang — or at least a number of mysterious explosions.
At the time, the Torrens lake was a centre of activity in Adelaide rather than its modern function as a scenic stretch of water to be admired.
Watersports of all kinds were enjoyed on the lake, such as the famous swimming races between the city bridges.
Even the first Adelaide Festival in 1960 had a demonstration of synchronised waterskiing.
On the eve of the Henley on Torrens Regatta, on December 5, 1924, the Floating Palais opened, opposite the Elder Park Rotunda.
It had a central dance floor decorated as a Moorish palace, a promenade around the edge and a rooftop garden.
It was licensed for 700 people, although 1800 managed to cram aboard for the launch, much to the consternation of the city council.
For the next four years, it was a centre of Adelaide’s nightlife and a romantic meeting place.
In 1921, Barcroft Teesdale Smith had opened the Palais Royale, a dance hall on North Tce that continued to be popular into the 1960s before it was converted into a carpark.
Smith decided that a floating Palais de Danse would be more exciting and exotic, and he convinced the city council of his plan. It is thought to have been designed by Adelaide inventor Allan Betteridge.
Measuring 43m by 18m, it had a dance floor that could cope with hundreds of dancers, and its two levels, Moorish domes, painted decorations and electric lighting gave it exotic appeal.
Of course, being 1920s Adelaide, alcohol could not be served, and instead Smith introduced an American-style soda fountain. Yet alcohol was frequently smuggled aboard. One story has it that if the police were sighted the Floating Palais cut its moorings and floated safely out on to the lake.
True or not, there were frequent incidents where the Palais had to be retrieved after floating off down river.
There were afternoon tea dances, formal balls, wedding receptions and plenty of work for Adelaide’s most popular live bands.
The original Floating Palais came to an undignified end one Sunday morning, November 28, 1928, when there were muffled explosions below deck and the craft sank into the mud, its dance floor more than 30cm below the lake’s surface.
Adelaide abounded with rumours of sabotage but the police could find no definitive cause except for the possibility of a kitchen gas build-up and explosion, or the Douglas fir timbers of the craft succumbing to dry rot and explosively collapsing.
It was refloated and used during the December 1928 Henley on Torrens Regatta, but found to be structurally unsafe. In April 1929, it was towed further down the lake and broken up for scrap.
The new Floating Palais has been initiated after a number of informal approaches were made to the Adelaide City Council about establishing a floating venue to take advantage of the huge popularity of the Torrens since the opening of the new Adelaide Oval and the Torrens Footbridge.
The Festival directors, Neil Armfield and Rachel Healey, have decided that the Palais will be the main Festival venue during their appointment for the next three festivals — so a floating venue on the Torrens is back for the duration.
They gave Robert Cousins the job of designing the new Palais, from the waterline up, and he has conceived a multipurpose venue where lighting will play a major part.
“It’s a temporary building that has to be easy to put up and down for the next three festivals,” he said.
Cousins says you will be able to find the DNA of the original Floating Palais in the designs.
“For me it has to be a real visual landmark for the Festival as well,” he said.