What We Have Lost With the Closing of The Curious Rabbit
When The Curious Rabbit closed its doors, it wasn’t just a café or a gallery that disappeared from our streetscape. It was an atmosphere. A pulse. A rare kind of community magic that can’t be easily rebuilt once it’s gone.
We lost a place where people didn’t just meet we found each other.
Artists, musicians, writers, activists, students, retirees, wanderers, creatives who had never felt quite at home anywhere else… all of them knew they would be welcomed at The Rabbit. It held space for every misfit and every visionary in equal measure.
We lost an incubator of courage.
How many people read their poetry for the first time there? How many musicians played to a room of gentle, forgiving faces who clapped like they’d just witnessed a miracle? How many artists hung their very first exhibition on its brick walls? The Rabbit didn’t just showcase creativity it nurtured it.
We lost a place that treated art as a conversation, not a commodity.
Walls changed monthly. Ideas shifted weekly. You could walk in for a coffee and walk out having had your worldview rearranged by a stranger at the next table. There was nothing passive about The Rabbit it asked something of you. To look. To think. To feel.
We lost a home for community organising.
From social justice conversations to queer events, fundraisers to grassroots gatherings, The Curious Rabbit made it possible for people to get together when they had something to say, something to fight for, or something to celebrate. It gave community action a living room.
We lost a beating heart for emerging culture in a regional city.
In places like ours, spaces like The Curious Rabbit are not “nice-to-haves.” They’re essential. They function as studios, hubs, therapy, refuge, rehearsal rooms, meeting places, networking events, quiet corners, loud stages, and memory-making machines.
We lost a reminder that small, bold, independent spaces can change the texture of a whole town
The Curious Rabbit was living proof that art doesn’t need to be grand to be powerful. It needs to be accessible, authentic and intertwined with community. When that disappears, the whole ecosystem feels it artists, audiences, organisations, young people looking for their “place”, older people looking for connection, and everyone in between.
But most of all, we lost a place that made people feel less alone.
Its closure leaves a gap that is cultural, emotional and deeply personal for so many. The Rabbit wasn’t just a venue it was a companion. A compass. A gentle push forward when the world felt too heavy or too small.
As we grieve its absence, we also carry its legacy. Every artist who grew braver there. Every idea that was born at one of its tables. Every friendship sparked. Every community movement that first took a breath inside its walls.
The Curious Rabbit may be gone, but its impact runs through this region like threads of colour that will not fade.
And maybe that’s the next chapter: not replacing it but honouring it by creating new spaces that hold people with the same tenderness, courage and curiosity.