Treasury Building

This is a beautiful building once used to house government officials but abandoned in recent years, which has been a waste of fabulous space, really. Most recently the Treasury has played home to the Perth Fringe World Festival, and I was fortunate to have gone to see Bomb The Bass and The Orb perform a duet set there the other night.
The Treasury wall doubled up as a giant video screen, and on it were projected montages of the kookiest imagery. Whether this kind of rave-​like set up will ever happen again after the Fringe Fest if over, and once the building is taken over by corporations and turned into a block of innercity apartments, is doubtful. So what spot of heritage architecture to take over at the next party fest, peoples?

Perth’s got a slew of old abandoned buildings rich with history and the Treasury Building is one of them. A great big bunker of a thing, it was WA’s first government office building and opened up in 1874. Like many of Perth’s first buildings, it’s a mixture of free Federation classical and Victorian second empire style, giving its derelict façade an even spookier appearance. Officially abandoned in 1996, the building only recently opened up to the public for the Fringe World Festival. I saw a performance here the other night and certainly was an interesting use of a venue, but boy do I wish it were air conditioned. The inside was, as you can imagine, heavily deteriorated with scuffed wooden floor boards and peeling paint. All that’s about to change soon though, as they’re upgrading the building to a 5-​star boutique hotel. I recommend checking out the festival though because the building is really cool in a haunted mansion kind of way.