City of Karratha Mayor, Peter Long talks about the fabulous new Red Earth Arts Precinct which includes a library, exhibition areas and an outdoor events area.
Hi I'm Peter Long.
I'm the Mayor of Karratha and I'd like to talk to you about our Red Earth Arts precinct. The Red Earth Arts Precinct combines our library, a theatre and cinema which is combined, exhibition areas for artwork and paintings and sculptures and it also includes an outdoor events area, which we call 'the shelf'.
The facility cost us $55 million to build but most of the labour was actually hired locally, we hired everybody locally that was possible to do so though if the trades were available. We think about 60% of the labour was Karratha based.
The City of Karratha actually runs the whole complex so that includes the library itself and the theatre and the rehearsal rooms and the other facilities that we have here.
The role of Council is very important in remote and regional towns, it's very difficult to get a lot of things done here and people are not willing to invest in anything that doesn't have a very immediate dollar return and so our Council has been forward-thinking and this is an example of what we've done where we've invested $25million dollars in this facility and we've done this in several other facilities that we built too, including our Airport and the office building in the centre of town which we called The Quarter and arrange of our other facilities.
There's always something happening in Karratha it's a very busy place, particularly in the winter.
If you're ever in Karratha don't forget to call into the Red Earth Arts Precinct or look at our website www.karratha.wa.gov.au and you'll actually see the program of events which maybe cinema, or maybe art, or it may be some other type of show. So please come and enjoy yourself.