Leisure

I remember reading something at some point which mentioned the surprising fact that leisure, as we know it, was invented in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

Prior to this, when most "common" folk were farmers, farmers never took two weeks off. They kept farming all year round. Sure, they might take a day off for religious observances, but even then they still did the basics like milking the cows and making the daily bread and all that jazz. After the Industrial Revolution*, the working classes were lucky if they got a half-day on Sundays. They pretty much worked until the couldn't work any longer. Then they dropped dead shortly thereafter.

The upper classes didn't really count with the whole "leisure" thing. That was just the way they lived. Yes, they'd toddle off to the country to take a break from the city, or they'd go to the city to take a break from the country, but their past times and sports were seasons rather than "leisure time".

It was after the middle classes became the main social power and the working classes finally decided to band together to campaign for a Life (both events more or less a product of the 19th Century) that the concept of a "holiday" with "leisure time" was born.

Suddenly, the clerk in the haberdashery had two whole weeks a year in which to go some place and do something completely un-work related.

Suddenly, people needed places to go and things to do. And both had to be something your average clerk in the haberdashery could afford.

And so holiday resorts and camps came into being. Seaside towns that not only offered beaches and change rooms, but also "stuff". Stuff like ice-cream shops and confectionery stores. Stuff like dining rooms and dance halls. Stuff like the kind of side-show attractions that tended to travel with circuses. Toys to play with on the beach. Parks to frolic in with your family. Wooden bandstands complete with brass bands. Roving barbershop quartets. Steamboats to take you for jaunts up the large rivers and punters to take you, well, punting along the smaller water courses.

The seaside or lakeside resort was very much a product of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Which explains why, on some level, design elements popular during the turn of the century were still touching theme parks right up until the 1980s. For some reason, nothing says "foot loose and fancy free holiday fun" quite like a wooden building painted white and red with a big hall and a stage at one end (decorated with bunting - everything looks festive if you add bunting). Especially if you can walk out of this building onto a lawn that spreads down to some body of water.

I'm rabbiting on about this because I had a strange dream last night. I dreamt that I was talking to someone about a "theme park" (actually a smallish water park) that used to be in Townsville when I was a kid, called "Willows Water World". I don't remember this place very well as I only went one or two times before it closed down. For a great many years it was a wasteland situated unusually close to a shopping centre, and then they fixed the land and put another block of shops there. I do half recall, however, that it borrowed a bit of the Edwardian look for some of the buildings - that wooden look with the white and red paint.

In this dream, I accidentally stumbled upon a place I'd never found before - some obscure little shop selling ice cream and devonshire tea where they had salvaged the parts of Willows Water World I remember and made something in that vein. I was so very pleased to find this place and spend a few minutes indulging in the nostalgia of it all. It occurred to me, after I woke, that I was wrong. This strange little coffee shop of my dream wasn't constructed out of WWW at all. Well, there was the shooting gallery which was attached to the shop, and that was definitely from WWW, but the rest of it wasn't quite right. It was actually closer to the DreamWorld I used to visit as a child.

DreamWorld is a theme park on the Gold Coast that was once entirely based on the old resort towns of the Edwardian period. Trains, cars and rides around the park all had an early 20th look, the "shops" in the "town centre" were all based on that "ye olde toffee shoppe" style design and there was a River Boat which would take you to watch some show involving bushrangers. There was also a large wooden hall were one could order sandwiches and other timeless goodies for lunch, and where one might encounter a barber shop quartet doing the rounds. In a different part of the park there was a "music hall" - actually an anamatronic show with a bunch of Australian animals performing songs like "Do What You Do Do Well".

As a young child, I loved this place. I didn't know it was a salute to a bygone era, but I thought it was beautiful. It was full of things you just didn't see every day. Going back later, as an older child, I was less enchanted - but largely because the place was falling into disrepair. It's hard to feel captivated by an anamatronic kangaroo when the fur is getting threadbare. And the cars weren't working. And the bushranger show was only running twice a day. And the barbershop quartet was gone...

Now, it's completely changed tack. It's been bought out by some company connected with Nickelodeon. Half the park is full of the "latest and greatest" theme park rides, and most of it is themed after one or another television show. My lovely old lunch hall has been replaced with "Wiggles World". Not only have they taken out the "music hall", but they've actually turned the entire area into some kind cartoon-themed roller coaster. Oh, and the lovely old roller coaster which used to look like it came from early 20th Century America? Gone. Too "old hat", I guess. All that's left is the toffee shop. Oh, and the train. At least they've still got the train.

All in all, it's more like stepping into a giant advertisement than a "dream world".

I wish there was someplace like the old DreamWorld I could visit one day. Even if it was just a coffee shop selling ice cream and devonshire teas...