Andrew Bartlett has written an excellent post on the cultural climate of the Joh era in Brisbane and its continuing legacy. It’s very interesting to observe that a climate of harsh repression and boredom stimulated so much culture and creativity burbling up below the surface. There’s a Foucauldian point here - power and resistance are intimately entwined. Paradoxically when Goss came to power, and the arts became the recipients of state patronage, a lot of the edginess and excitement of the Brisvegas scene disappeared, though there’s still a lot of very interesting cultural work being done. A friend of mine who’s a few years younger than me bemoaned the fact that she heard about all sorts of stuff when she was a teenager, but when she reached legal drinking age most of it had been shut down or sanitised. As I noted at m c gregg’s place, Andrew Stafford’s excellent book Pig City, which Andrew also mentions, is a fabulous politico-cultural history of the Joh years. Interestingly, in light of the point I’m making, Andrew’s book also kind of peters out after the early 90s. Another way to recapture the unique feel of the Joh years, which I’ve written about before, is through literature - Andrew McGahan’s Last Drinks has the added benefit of giving rise to some fascinating reflections on memory, nostalgia, forgetting and mourning. Andrew’s time as a Queensland Uni Arts student just overlapped with mine - I didn’t know him but we had people such as John Birmingham in common. The mid-80s in Brisbane (it wasn’t suffixated as Brisvegas until a bit later) was the time I first engaged with politics, and culture, and sex, and what passed for adult life in those years. So, because of the heady feelings thinking back to those years inspire in me, heightened by Joh’s death, I’m still not quite ready to revisit the memories of that time. Every death has its own meaning, and its own effects on others, and I’m quite surprised by what Joh’s death has made me feel. The ghosts of that past are still with me, it seems.
In the meantime, here are some memories that sprang to mind when Joh turned 94:
Time to revisit the Dispatches from Johburg and share some random memories of my teenage years under the reign of Bjelke:
- as a young public service clerk, going up to the third floor of the Treasury Building with some friends and sitting in Russ Hinze’s enormous leather chair and drinking his scotch
- coming home every night during the Seqeb strike and reading by candlelight
- smoking dope on the dance floor of the unlicensed club downstairs on Elizabeth Street in the middle of town that was open twenty four hours
- being taken by my boss to the gambling joint over the road from the Gabba Dogs and discovering that the scotch and sandwiches and cab fare were free and that uniformed cops would come in to throw out people who complained the games were rigged
- the Joh for PM sticker that came free with the Saturday Courier-Mail one week
- watching Big Russ on tv declare “there are no illegal casinos or brothels in Brisbane - Terry Lewis drove me round the Valley last night and showed me where they weren’t”
- watching the cops arrest a priest in vestments and a one-legged woman on crutches and them being bundled into the back of a paddywaggon at a protest at Victoria Park
- the pile of stat decs for underage patrons at the ZZZ club in Roma Street where me and my mod suited friends used to go and listen to ska bands
- hearing on the radio in a Yellow Cab (typical cabbie opening line - “what do you think about that Joh, mate? lots of cranes on the skyline”) that Joh had resigned and the incredibly violent storm felt absolutely right
- the feeling of freedom that you’d get driving over the NSW border
- how nothing ever happened on Sundays and the buses stopped at 5pm
It’s funny how many memories of the Joh Era seem to be night time ones. But it was that sort of time. Pleasures were secret and hidden, and protesting was too hard sometimes in a sweaty Brisbane summer. Much easier to drink beer on the back deck. You can get a sense of the feel of the Joh years in Andrew McGahan’s excellent novel Last Drinks and Venero Armanno’s Firehead…
On a different note: There’s a guest post by another Queenslander on the politics of Johdom at Barista. Rob Corr puts Joh in his place very succinctly.
In other Joh-related news: The mooted picket of his funeral has been called off.
Worth a visit: The Queensland College of Art has an exhibition of 70s/80s political posters at its Southbank gallery.
Elsewhere: Michael talks about his memories of Joh over at Poustinia.
I think the war stories of the Anti-Joh RSL are starting to get out of hand Mark. The old soldiers might like to fantasise about a raffish youth spent at Rick’s - waiting for that metaphorical plane to Lisbon/liberty and trying not to be rounded up with the usual suspects. But, unfortunately, it never happened. In country Queensland we cheered Joh’s demolition of the ETU. Who knows how many jobs, livelihoods, mortgages, marriages and lives those cretans destroyed? It says a lot about their decency that union diehards were going to terrorise a funeral. Somebody should picket the picketers.
Take a chill pill, C.L.
Rics opened in 93.
And a lot of jobs, livelihoods, mortgages, marriages and lives were destroyed by Joh, and not just of ETU members.
I didn’t support the picket, and I’m also reluctant to launch into a political spray about Joh at this time. That’s why I’m writing about culture and my memories. Your experience in country Queensland may well have been different, but I’m writing about my memories - more to explore the nature of memory itself and some questions about creativity than anything overtly politically motivated.
I was referring to the Casablanca nightclub Mark, metaphorically. Just responding to your memory with one of mine but if there are rules now - your memories must be like mine etc - well, fair enough. Your post did include overtly political references and links. As you know, I loved that Troppo Johburg post and think your memories of those times are wonderful. However, a discourse, including a cultural one, that seeks to understand the man without reference to the bush will always come across to many Queenslanders as false. And so the old antagonisms go on I suppose.
cretans
Were they from Crete?
Not industrious or civilised enough.
terrorise a funeral
What a wonderfully loose use of the term! That’s precisely how we end up with a police state like Joh’s.
You’ve got more in common with Joh than I have Rob. If you don’t consider the picketing of a funeral where hundreds of family members - including children and the deceased’s elderly wife are bereaved and suffering to be a kind of terrorisation, than you can’t be a whole lot better than Terry Lewis.
Oh, please, won’t somebody think of the children?
Come off it CL. It’s not a private funeral. It’s a State event, gun carriage, flags, salutin’ and all. A few protesters whacked in the guts, CS gassed and packed bleeding and broken into divvy vans would be a proper send-off for Joh. Everyone would be happy!
May I suggest we drive them straight to the Grassby State funeral where they can accuse Mrs G of bumping off her husband. The Mackays would appreciate the gesture.
I’m sure they wouldn’t appreciate it, but if you consider a bunch of people waving placards to be “terrorists”… well, let’s just put it down as another of your rhetorical excesses, shall we?
All this is quite moot as the link I posted shows, the protesters have decided not to go to the funeral and hold a protest in Brisbane instead in King George Square.
So I can only assume it’s “conspicuous indignation”.
I’m with Liam. I reckon the old bugger would loved a farewell demo broken up by a ceremonial baton charge. And plenty of tear gas so there’s not a dry eye in the house.
I think he should be dipped in concrete a la Han Solo in Return of Jedi, then mounted on a plinth at Southbank facing Canberra, to be slowly polished smooth by the weather, crapped on by gulls and photographed by curious Japanese tourists.
“I think he should be dipped in concrete a la Han Solo in Return of Jedi, then mounted on a plinth at Southbank facing Canberra, to be slowly polished smooth by the weather, crapped on by gulls and photographed by curious Japanese tourists”
Were you drawing inspiration from what the Papists did with your ancestor Cromwell’s head, Nabs?
If anyone’d like to talk about the issues I actually raised in the post before C.L. derailed the discussion before it started, that’d be nice.
Incidentally, C.L., not having grown up in the bush I’m unable to see how I could incorporate that perspective into an assessment of Joh when what I’m writing about is my personal memories and the Brisbane cultural scene.
my lasting memory og Joh is him banning Fred Hollows to treatment of trachoma on Aboriginals because they were supposedly getting to register to vote at the same time.
They must now say thanks to him for their blindness!
He was lucky he was able to bring in his own resource rent tax in term of coal on the railways.
It was this that led to the Qld government finances being debt free now.
A lot of country folk, including Aborigines, remember the superior health system they once enjoyed before that was destroyed by two metrocentric Labor governments.
Rob’s rhetorical excesses, ‘quoting’ me: “terrorists.” Try ‘terrorise.’
Mark, yesterday I posted on the Bali nine and I don’t think one of 40 commenters agreed with me. So what? How can anyone, cognitively speaking, meaningfully comment on your memories? If you’re talking more broadly about Joh as cultural anti-icon, I’ve contributed by questioning the very theory of that. That’s on-topic, surely.
I’m more interested in the culturally significant fact that the heartlessness of Joh is the same as the heartlessness of his leftist critics - as Rob and Liam’s necro-heckling demonstrates.
That, in turn, points to a couple of things that were always culturally notable about Joh: first, his unrivalled capacity to divide people, passionately; and 2) the extent to which the left in Queensland was never much better, morally speaking, than the right. That, in fact, is how Joh inherited a compromised and corruption-friendly polity in the first place. It was gifted to him by Labor. He was never great and shouldn’t be remembered as great because he did nothing about that. But Franco he wasn’t.
CL is correct in that the corrupt systen he inherited was designed by Labor and that should NEVER be forgotten.
I think the reason why he survived so long was the weakness of the Libs.
He is the most successful socialist we have seen.
C.L., what I wanted to get at in the post was two things -
(a) the paradox of creativity being encouraged by an anti-intellectual repressive climate;
(b) how events like Joh’s death resurface memories - not just mine, I’m sure.
I really didn’t intend to comment too much on his politics. The links were there because they were relevant to other coverage of Joh - for those who wish to debate his politics. You’ll recall that I linked to your post in an earlier post. The ones I added on this one were new.
ps - you’re right about the Libs, Homer.
Wow, now Joh’s corruption was Labor’s fault! Nice one, CL.
Stick to WA Rob. You really don’t know what you’re talking about.
The other reason Joh survived so long was because the Labor Party abolished the Upper House of the Queensland Parliament in the 1930s. With a majority in the Lower House, nobody could stop Joh rorting the whole system.
That’s a word of caution to the unicameralists of today.
The evil old prick is finally dead. Why extend the time the smell has to linger by constantly bothering to write about him. The world is now a better & brighter place for his passing. It took long enough.
My memories of the Joh era are part of this article in the Sydney Star Observer
http://www.ssonet.com.au/display.asp?ArticleID=4246
And I’ve put up some more on my own blog
http://www.sodomology.org/blog/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=19&blogId=1
I read with some sadness the comments of CL.
His/her display of ignorance was truly lamentable
Do you realise what Joh Bjelke was?
A Fascist.
Why don’t you read
“The Deep North” by Deane Wells???
Then perhaps you might lose the flowery language e.g. Raffish youth
I mean that is laughable!
Who the hell talks like that?
Memorise “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell.