Melbourne’s new Wheeler Centre — a History and a Plug

It’s an excit­ing time to be liv­ing in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia, The World. Last year Mel­bourne was announced as the sec­ond UNESCO City of Lit­er­a­ture, closely beat­ing out Madrid, Tokyo and Chicago for the honour.

This meant that Mel­bourne needed to find an entity to be the cen­tre­piece of the new City of Lit­er­a­ture. After scout­ing around for peo­ple who could build such a cen­tre­piece, the engi­neers that built the Collins Class sub­marines were even­tu­ally over­looked in favour of world-renowned arts man­ager Chrissy Sharp. A shame really because book read­ings in sub­marines are da bomb. Or at least, da torpedo.

Chrissy Sharp, who was fresh from a stint at London’s Sadler’s Wells The­atre, is the kind of author­i­ta­tive inter­na­tional fig­ure who should never be described as being ‘fresh from a stint’. She is not a footballer.

Chrissy hired local pub­lish­ing guru Michael Williams to run the pro­gram, turquoise was cho­sen to be the offi­cial colour of the cen­tre and things were under­way. But there was one thing miss­ing – a name.

The cen­tre was even­tu­ally called the Wheeler Cen­tre (a name that, for me, con­jures up images of axles) after Tony and Mau­reen Wheeler, who founded Lonely Planet in Mel­bourne 30 years ago, and whom are donors to the cen­tre. And no they didn’t name the cen­tre after them­selves. Where do you think we are? Pottersville?

The Wheeler Cen­tre set up shop in the south wing of the State Library of Vic­to­ria and a num­ber of Melbourne’s small lit­er­ary organ­i­sa­tions — such as the Emerg­ing Writ­ers’ Fes­ti­val and Express Media — moved into the cen­tre, where they are free to use the pho­to­copier and cof­fee machine when­ever they want.

Now we’re but days away from the cen­tre offi­cially open­ing with its big kick-off event – A Gala Night of Sto­ry­telling. It will be the first time in Aus­tralian his­tory that the word ‘Gala’ has been used out­side of the Mel­bourne Inter­na­tional Com­edy Festival.

Just two days after the Gala is the first Debut Mon­day – a recur­ring event that sees four new writ­ers read­ing from their books on Mon­day evenings. I will be appear­ing at the debut Debut Mon­day event at 6pm on Feb­ru­ary 15th where I’ll be read­ing from The Great­est Blog­ger in the World. Bob Franklin, Sofie Laguna and Madeleine Hamil­ton will also be there read­ing from their books. It’s a free event, there will be wine on hand and I’m told that all the authors will be read­ing from their books out loud. I know, right!

If you’re in Mel­bourne or you’re going to be in Mel­bourne soon have a look at the Wheeler Cen­tre pro­gram and pop by some­time. I’m sure they’ll be glad to have to. So long as you don’t tell them their state-of-the-art lit­er­ary cen­tre reminds you of axles.

www.wheelercentre.com