Bell Tower

Writing about the Opera House, Sydney's famous landmark, dredged up annoying memories of Perth's failure to take advatage of a similiar opportunity.

The highly controversial Bell Tower was built for the millennium. It houses the, "Bells of St Martins", of nursery rhyme fame. Presented by the City of London to Perth in 1988 as part of Australia's bicentennial celebrations, these historic bells were incorporated into a larger collection, the Swan Bells. The Bell Tower was specifically designed to house these precious sounds of the past.

Controversy raged over the proposed site, size, cost and anything else the Conservative Doyens of Perth could find to object to. As I understand it the whingers did not manage to have the project aborted but did cause the size of the building to be significantly reduced.

The result of which has led to this unique building, which should have been a landmark (quite a rare commodity in this city) being hardly noticeable.

Oh yes and the actual bells, for reasons beyond me, are hardly ever heard and when they are the sound is dampened to such an extent that one wonders why they bothered to pull the ropes in the first place.

By contrast we have the awful but hard to miss, Convention Centre....but that is another story.