I hate the Crown Casino. Am I on my own?

Friday 20th April 2012
Southbank, Melbourne

Australia holds the world record for gambling, with more than eighty per cent of its adult population trying their luck on the horses, sports betting, casino tables or gaming machines (better known as Pokies to the locals.) It's the Pokies that are the main draw and also a real social problem for many Australians - the sheer number of them is astounding: for a country with just the fifty third largest population in the world, it has by far the most gaming machines on the planet. Even a smallish Australian city puts Las Vegas to shame.  They are absolutely everywhere, from cities to country towns, from casinos to your local pub. Australians spend more of their income on gambling than they do on putting clothes on their back. 

"For many, the jingles and electronic clatter of the "pokies" have become just as quintessentially Australian sounds as the call of a kookaburra."  BBC NEWS ONLINE

The spiritual home of Pokies in Melbourne is the Crown Casino, which boasts another dubious record of being the largest casino in the southern hemisphere. It covers an area the same as two city blocks would, and its two thousand five hundred pokies and three hundred and fifty gaming tables attract more than twelve million people a year, who also flock to the cinemas, restaurants, shopping malls, hotels, and conference rooms housed in the same mammoth complex.

It is without doubt the ugliest thing you'll ever see in a city so completely defined by its Victorian beauty. It's a towering monstrosity casting an evil shadow over the Yarra River below, and the tree lined boulevards and quaint alleyways a stone's throw away. And although the Casino has been a hot topic of both political and social debate since it relocated here in 1997 from the other side of the city, it is now so entrenched in the local entertainment and tourist scene that it is firmly here to stay. The city could not cope without the million dollars of tax revenue it generates, the fuel it provides for the local tourist and service industry, or the media attention generated by the hundreds of star studded glamour events it holds each year. 

But the Crown will have to manage without any of our own hard earned cash dropping into its Pokies reserves any time soon. We were only here for the cinema, and we had free tickets.