1973: the year Tasmania got a casino
The political fight, the revolving restaurant and the architect's original sketch — how a concrete tower on Sandy Bay changed Australian tourism.
The wager
In 1968 the state parliament bet that a casino could fund itself out of tourism alone. The licence fight ran for years — editorials, inquiries, one famous filibuster — before the nation's first legal casino licence landed on Sandy Bay.
The chosen site was a biscuit factory foreshore. The brief was absurd and perfect: build a tower visible from the bridge, and put a restaurant on top that never stops moving.
The tower
Fourteen floors rose in eighteen months — brutalist optimism with a revolving crown. Opening night, February 1973, drew queues around the block and a blackjack pit that didn't close until dawn.
The architect's original sketch hangs in the library corridor: a crescent of rooms all facing the river, decades before that became the 2021 rebuild's brief.
They built a casino on a biscuit factory and accidentally invented Australian tourism.
Archive caption, 1974
The legacy
Every Australian casino that followed cites this tower's opening as the precedent. The revolving floor still revolves; the terrazzo under your feet in the lobby is the 1973 pour.
Heritage listing in 2004 protected the façade — and the 2019 rebuild hollowed everything behind it, keeping the nerve and replacing the plumbing.
See it yourself
The archive wall runs along the library corridor — plates, licences, the original gaming chips — free to wander, and the concierge has the stories that didn't make the captions.
Ask at the desk for the heritage walk; it ends, correctly, at the revolving floor with a cocktail.
Take the heritage walk
Daily at 11:00 — forty minutes through the archive corridor ending at the revolving floor.
- Duration40 min
- CostComplimentary
- Meeting pointLibrary corridor