About
“Dream Burnie is like the best dreams themselves: transmissions from strange yet familiar places, where nothing is quite what it seems, and if you just let yourself go, surprising revelations arrive.”
— Wally De Backer
Justin - Author
Over the last five years I’ve been reconnecting with my hometown of Burnie. A doorway presented itself to collaborate with the Burnie Arts Council. I seized the opportunity to write an ambitious book honouring the creative alumni that have come from the place.
Burnie is on the North-West coast of Tasmania. It has about 19, 000 people. In 1988 the Queen came and declared it a city. In 2020 it had the first stage-four lockdown anywhere in Australia. Burnie’s official symbol is the emu. It used to be called Emu Bay.
I feel like the place has gone through a rough patch in terms of morale lately. As an artist, my response to negativity is always to create something awesome. Art is the best therapy. It’s the most effective way to harness energy and create culture. Sometimes people don’t quite know what the words art or culture mean or why they are important. (Me included.)
As one of my interviewees Telen Rodwell says in the book “we’re all just stories.”
Stories are important, you see. It’s how we connect and make sense of things. Most artworks are glorified stories or dreams. Sometimes they are just very abstract and poetic and personal. But let’s face it, they’re pretty amazing. And it’s even more incredible that people are still choosing to be artists in 2025.
Along the way, I wanted to do justice to the significant collection of 1980s and 1990s newspapers that my mum kept over the years. I realised they were a time capsule of ads from businesses and shops of my childhood. Pop culture is like a family member to me. (Hey Pop!) I’ve been honouring it my entire career. Nostalgia is something that I live and breathe. It’s just another word for being connected to your past. The past matters. It is also quite funny, which is convenient.
I know that Burnie residents get a real kick out of remembering the place how it used to be. I like the idea of juxtaposing this dream world with real interviews with current working artists in the present world. The artists I’ve chosen have broken through to the wider world – and by that I mean the mainland. They show a clear dedication to their craft and a talent unique to them.
It turns out half the creative people in the book didn’t realise the other half were from Burnie. We’re like satellites, transmitting signals. Blinking lights in cyberspace. These careers are important and have value.
Dream Burnie places these achievements and stories in a bottle.
Some people think Burnie is just like any other country town. Others, like myself, have always assumed there is something especially intense, particular, compromised and maybe, on a good day, special about the place. The word ‘dream’ came up a lot in interviews. We live in one of the only places where you can wake up and take a few steps and stare into infinity over the technicolour ocean. We take it for granted, sometimes.
The truth is Burnie has some of the best clouds in the world and if there was an Olympics for sunsets we would be taking home gold, silver and bronze. As a child there was an absolute blank canvas and empty dancefloor for our minds to roam and our souls to spread their wings. When in doubt, fly away into big ideas.
Who are you not to dream?
So, welcome to my fourth book.
It’s colourful, like the people.
Justin Heazlewood, Montello, 2025.
With thanks to Lyndal Thorne and the Burnie Arts Council.
“Justin Heazlewood is a Burnie original. He has interviewed 20 or so people who also qualify for that description. The result is a Burnie I barely know existed.”
— Martin Flanagan