Mole Creek's new tourist information sign

Mole Creek started out in the 19th century as a camp for loggers and trappers [1]. Nowadays it’s a tourist town [2]. I’ve heard the B12 road west from Deloraine through Mole Creek towards Cradle Mountain [3] is Tasmania’s busiest tourist road. True or apocryphal? I’ve no idea. Most of Mole Creek’s businesses are geared to tourism: caravan park, guesthouse and restaurant, craft shop, hotel, café, rental cottages, B&Bs [4]. The hotel and café provide tourist information. From late Autumn (i.e. Easter) to early Spring (i.e. now) – the tourism off-season – the village hibernates. But in the past few days, coinciding with the Victorian school holidays, it’s started to stir: a sprinkling of cars with mainland licence plates, couples and families eyeing the craft shop’s display window offerings, people excitedly pointing cameras at the snow-capped Great Western Tiers [5]. All are signals the 2010/11 tourist season’s begun. To celebrate, and to help the tourists orient themselves and navigate to local natural and man-made attractions, we have a new sign. It’s on a giant board across from the guesthouse. The same board used to sport an amateurish sign. Recently a signwriting crew painted it over, then hand-painted the new sign. As the photograph shows, its style’s art naïve [6] – kind of. For wider views, click here [7]. Me? I like it – mainly as it’s not corporate. I think the world has far too many signs. But this one’s a good ’un. You betcha.

The Grate Typo Hunt

Jeff Deck (pictured). Last week, a microsecond after I learned of his exploits, I added him to my list of heroes. Deck, an American, had been keen on spelling since junior high school when he won some spelling bees. After seeing lots of misspellings on signs around Boston where he lived, he decided he’d had enough. So in early 2008 he and some friends set off on a 3-month US-wide quest to repair misspellings on signs [1]. The target was to fix one error per day. (They found 400 and fixed 200.) The self-styled Typo Eradication Advancement League [TEAL] [2] blogged about their ‘2008 Typo Hunt Across America’ [3]. A book resulted: The Great Typo Hunt – Two friends changing the world, one correction at a time, by Deck and Benjamin D Herson [4], was published last week [5]. And thus the ‘Typo Hunt II: Book Tour’ [6]. Me? I’ve an above average interest in spelling. Call me a pedant or borderline OCD. I don’t mind. Clearly there are two types of spelling error: a mistake (where writer knew the correct spelling) and a non-mistake (where the writer didn’t). I can forgive the latter, but not the former. Because (before, during and) after all, the purpose of language is communication. And I reckon almost all misspelt signs still communicate the intended message. Be all this as it may, Deck’s still my hero. I hope the State Library of Tasmania buys a copy of his book for public loan.