Not only does the Queen City of the North have an impressive former post office tower clock which does not work , displaying a variety of times at once, but another prominent timepiece at the above Townsville Travel Centre has also long been out of operation , permanently showing it is almost a quarter to eight . Recently extensive renovation work was carried out on the fine old nearby railway building, but nobody in authority thought it a good idea to wind up the clock .
In the case of the old post office , the building now the Brewery , British television personality Tony Robinson , in Townsville as part of his popular Down Under time walk television series , asked why the clock was not working . He was told that it was intended to get the clock going in the near future . As they say, tempus fugit and the clock still is not working , the local media unable to find time to ask follow up time and motion questions. Originally the post office clock chimed and was dismantled and stored after the bombing of Darwin in l942. Overseas visitors could be baffled, bemused by this strange state of affairs in respect of the city's non- working clocks .
It is surely time that the powers that be in this over-wound and increasingly PR bombarded city synchronised watches and got on with the job of making the place tick , instead of presenting a run down , dithering image , a bit like Alice in wonder-when-it-will- be-fixed-land .
