Not really.
I was having a chat with my flatmate this afternoon about how our fine town has changed over the years, sparked in part by his friend’s contribution to the wonderful anthology of short stories, One Book, Many Brisbanes, which has to be one of the best cultural things any City Council has done for a while (or on the other hand, maybe it’s the painted traffic signal boxes). In part it was also inspired by the truly stinky and hot day (we’ve largely had a most uncharacteristically pleasant summer) which really annoys because we’re tormented and teased by the build up in humidity and grey clouds, but the storms we used to enjoy for the release they brought no longer seem to happen – though some weather divinities in these parts obviously still try hard to make it rain for us. Anyway, I must have got thinking because I left a very long comment on a post at Home Cooked Theory, which I think deserves a life of its own as a post here. It was a bit of a segue from Mel’s post, rather than a direct response.
And at some point tonight I thought I could pick up on some of my previous thoughts about photoblogging and flickrblog the post (to coin a phrase) courtesy of all the wonderful people who put up their photos with a Creative Commons Licence.
<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/storm.jpg"
[Image courtesy of Smørrebrød røm pøm] Here’s a link to the full sized photo, which looks to have been taken from the top of Hamilton Hill.
Iâm always interested in theorising and musing about Brisbane.
I was chatting to my flatmate today about the âOne Book, Many Brisbanesâ? collection, in which a friend of his has a story. We were talking about the decline in inner city life – but thereâs a lot of causes for it apart from some existential emptiness – which you advert to when you refer to bland cafe culture – a lot is simply to do with policy driven housing market inflation which Howard has visited upon all of us – though the fairly distinct Brisvegan Paddington, New Farm and West End microcultures started showing signs of cannibalisation by gentrification around 94. Around 99 the game was lost for good.
<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/moretonst.jpg"
[Image of the street in New Farm where I've lived for almost five years courtesy of el captain]
But itâs funny you should mention the contrast with Sydney. I suspect a lot of that has to do with where we are from. Being a lifelong Brisvegas person I remember thinking when they built places like the James St strip and Watt that the worst aspects of Sydney culture had been imported here – waiters/door bitch bouncers who decide if you can come in for a drink, self-conscious show by beautiful/rich people and wannabes. Iâve never found Sydney a particularly congenial place (and Iâm aware thereâs a lot more to it than what Iâm writing about here) except when I can find Brisbanian parallels (Glebe is very much like the old West End).
<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/james-st.jpg"
[Image of a TSB on James Street by Elsje Downs sums up a lot about this strip - courtesy of RaeA]
Certainly part of the old âgrungeâ? era Brisbane was as Birmingham and McGahan describe it, though I think McGahan (and Armanno) capture aspects Birmingham doesnât. But that might be because they focus on worlds I was less familiar with – I went to uni with John and I know or knew most of the people he wrote about and lived the same sort of sharehouse lifestyle.
<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/queenslander.jpg"
[Image courtesy of klorrainegraham]
That leads to another segue – and you can find this in creative writing as far back as Johnno (at least) – the sort of privatisation of life in Brisbane town. Reading Christos Tsiolkas years ago made me think this was an Anglo thing – certainly West End and New Farm were distinctive because they had more public cultures from Greek and Italian settlement, the traces of which still persist (just). But our draconian Joh years contributed a lot too. Shops only open on Saturday mornings, pubs closed at 10pm, the town virtually dead on Sundays except for church goers. The underworld that thrived, as an open secret, had its analogue in a certain secrecy to student and artistic cultures as well – again partly driven by the state in that lots of stuff we wanted to do was basically illegal or if not, weâd be hassled extralegally by the omnipresent (at least in imagination) cops and particularly the special branch. Living in a falling down Queenslander on the river at Kangaroo Point for $30 a week in 1988, my flatmates and I enjoyed an alleged drug raid where the âdetectivesâ? took much more interest in political posters and texts than any search for drugs.
So the âinfrastructure for liberationâ? was largely private – centring around spaces where bands practiced or art took place and primarily cheap to live in Queenslanders in the inner city. When I was at Uni, any Saturday night you could get the West End ferry across to Orleigh Park (pre City Cat – it was the old small ferry where one of the drivers would normally be drinking a bottle of scotch) and walk up to Hardgrave Road and find a party with people you knew in virtually every second house.
<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/west-end.jpg"
[Image of West End courtesy of el captain]
Similarly, most clubs were dreary discos or for the rugby playing polo shirt set, and we Lefties used to congregate at places like the Sitting Duck Cafe on Boundary St or the Zoo – back in the days when the eccentric licensing laws meant that they had to pretend to be restaurants and you got a plate of cauliflower with your cover charge and you had to eat some or theyâd lose their licence.
I think this is also one reason why the rave scene was big in Brisbane in the early 90s – people were used to taking over spaces that were unused and marginal and doing so illegally or extra legally.
<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/marz.jpg"
[Image of Freya Pinney's performance art - writing on the body with the tongue - in Ann St, the Valley courtesy of Evil Kernels]
In some ways the advent of the Labor government took a lot of the soul out of oppositional art and politics in this town. Nobody knew quite how to behave if suddenly we werenât being surveilled, and co-optation began to blunt the hard edges of power/resistance which brought so much creativity to art and politics and life. So, for example, while in the late 80s, there were at least three pubs with dedicated lesbian nights, by the mid 90s all was dead. Things were back underground but without the edge, and life was harder for lots of reasons too.
This is all connected, I think, to what are two truisms in Brisbane life – if youâre âfrom hereâ?, there is but half a degree of separation and if youâre ânot from hereâ?, you find it very hard to break through into the small town overlapping circles that still dominate the show. Many of which can be traced back to a group of people sitting on a back deck somewhere looking at a mango tree, or getting fiercely trashed in a Vietnamese restaurant.
<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/bridge.jpg"
[Image of the Story Bridge taken from New Farm courtesy of Rob and Juels]
Yay, I’ll be back in Brisbane in 5 days!
Thanks for the photos, Mark. That’s quite a beautiful city you’re living in there.
That first photo is particularly stunning — apparently the Second Coming has already begun in Brisbane, and youse couldn’t be arsed to alert the rest of the world…
“the wonderful anthology of short stories, One Book, Many Brisbanes, which has to be one of the best cultural things any City Council has done for a while…”
That is a great idea; hope it’s to be a regular publishing event. And hope the idea is copied by other cities…
No, it’s not the Second Coming. It’s the giant black roiling clouds that herald the arrival of a huge alien spaceship, as in “Independence Day”.
The vast circular craft will break through the clouds and hover over central Brisbane, looking for a great monumental piece of architecture, like the Sydney Opera House or Harbour Bridge, in order to blow it up.
But fortunately, there being no such impressive architecture in Brisbane, the aliens will shrug and fly off!
P.S. Excellent post and beautiful pix.
Another amazing thing about Brisbane is that as you come out of the tunnel inbound at Breakfast Creek onto the Innercity bypass, Bowen Hills looks like a classic scene from a Cezanne painting. Don’t think it was any great planning or architectual feat – just the way things fell together over the years.
ah – Mark. You’ve reminded me of all the things I miss about Brisbane. I moved there in the mid-80s not really expecting to stay long but through uni and getting involved in direct action/political stuff I found my niche. And missed it much more than I thought when I left. My closest friendships are still in Brisbane. It was a formative time.
Fortunately, it’s not a competition and I like Sydney too. But for different reasons.
Great photos!
Coming up to Brisbane from Sydney only two years ago I found it rather refreshing, so I wouldn’t find it all that negative Mark. People are a lot friendlier here than in Sydney, where it can get very, very, snobbish, cliqueish, even in ‘underground’ scenes (where a sort of snobby willful obscurism still abounds).
I’ve lived in all sorts of charming places — and by charming I mean small and backward and hot and dry, and by all sorts I mean about 10 different country towns and two major cities and one year in Canada — and this is true pretty much everywhere I’ve been.
That said, Sydney is however the most cliquish place I’ve ever pitched my tent, and I found it immensely hard to make friends there. So much so that most of my friends in Sydney were people who had also just moved to Sydney.
And I did enjoy my recent visit to Brisbane, found it a highly amenable place. I have put in a request with the HR department of our household that we be transferred either there or to Melbourne in 2009.
I have heard it said by people in Sydney that there are two reasons that people are friends in that town. Either they went to school together or they know the same people from Brisbane. (which an ex-Brisbaner in Melbourne says underplays the role ex-Perthers play in Sydney society, but I think he’s just being contrary.)
Now I think about it, the last time I went to a party in Sydney, it was at a house in Newtown with banana trees in the backyard and everyone I knew and met was from Brisbane. The only thing that gave it away as not being Brisbane was the size of the back yard.
Darryl:
Perthlings in Melbourne (I am one) have similar networks. “Where are all the Melburnians?”, I thought when I got here – surrounded by sandgropers, kiwis, and country Victorians. “In Frankston or Canada”, was the only half-joking reply.
Nice, I could almost live there. But I love old Sydney town to death and will never leave.
Of course, once you leave Sydney you realise how awesome it is and you dream about moving back there and you might even have cried when you had to leave it after your last visit.
I think the TSBs are much more important that One Book Many Brisbanes.
In fact, I have been wondering what the ‘iconic’ Brisbane photo should be, and one of the things that it could be is a traffic signal box.
I don’t think the Story Bridge is a good one, because Sydney already dominates the ‘Bridges in Australia’ category.
I love the TSBs, too, and I’d like to see some more faces on them to keep Beattie’s mug company. Wishful thinking perhaps, but what about some Brisbane music icons, like Forster & McLennan, Dave McCormack, et al.?
I moved from Perth to Brisbane two years ago, and it didn’t take long to fall in love with the place. Unlike many friends and acquaintances who have become ex-Perthites in Melbourne, I didn’t have an ‘expat’ crowd to fall in with. There’s a somewhat cliquish element in any place, but the Brisbane folk I stumbled upon were incredibly warm and welcoming.
After a period of self-imposed Asian exile, I’ll be returning to Brisvegas in a few months. I miss it more that I ever thought I would, and I can’t wait to be back.
Interestingly, David, and thanks for the link the other day, I was trawling through the flickr Brisbane pool looking for photos and I think the Story Bridge is probably the most photographed Brisbane structure, though that’s just an impression and I didn’t do any counting. So I think by default it’s probably our iconic thing.
I do think Brisbane is a beautiful city, but I think a lot of that comes not from iconic architecture in public buildings or cultural monuments but just the topography and the streetscapes. Nothing beats going for a wander around Red Hill or Highgate Hill and looking at the roofs of Queenslanders interspersed among all the trees.
I think steve’s on to something with this comment:
One of the things Mel mentioned in her post was how hard it was to get her friends from Sydney to come and visit. I’ve experienced something similar – friends from Melbourne (even non-ex-Brisbane ones) don’t hesitate to pop up, but Sydneysiders seem rarely to even contemplate making the trip. I don’t know if that’s because, as she suggests, the image of the place is distorted and frozen in various times, or if Sydney people just don’t see the point in coming when they have so much on offer in their own city. But I was struck when one friend of ours came up to visit a few years back, and my flatmate and I took him for a walk along the clifftops and he said “I never knew Brisbane was a beautiful city”.
j_p_z, the “One Book, Many Brisbane” thing has an interesting history. Originally it was “One Book, One Brisbane” – the idea being that the Council would promote one book which everyone would read each year. That was a bit odd, but they did stuff like organised reading groups in libraries, promoting sales through bookstores, etc. But it died in controversy when the judges couldn’t agree and in 2004 we had two “One Books”. I think originally the former Labor Mayor got the idea from Chicago – not 100% about that but it was one American city. Anyway, the new idea, which I think is a much better one, is definitely ongoing – entries for this year’s book closed in December.
I have a feeling the painted TSBs are unique. But again not 100% sure.
Stunning pictures, Mark!
Poor old Sydney. â¦this place has been accepting cultural &/or economic refugees not only from NSW country areas but all other capital cities and their regional areas, for decades now. As well as accepting the biggest and most diverse migrant intake every year, and the most tourists, and the most business migrants, and the euro-trash, and the backpackersâ¦.and so on.
In the inner city scene of late 70s and early 80âs â us locals were thin on the ground even then. In any group there would be people from brissy, melb, adel, perth and country areas outnumbering locals, in 1980! (Altho Melburnians were only ‘up for short time’…..unlike escapees from brissy and perth – who were never going back!! We also used to put quite a few casualties on the trains, back to wherever they came from â having successfully fried their brains in the big smoke.
And of course, every gay in every village, headed to Sydney town.
Itâs a bit hard to discuss âlocal Sydney cultureâ when for so very long â itâs been the nationâs melting pot. So donât look too harshly on poor old Sydney town. Is this is a Keating phrase â âArse end of the world, and youâre just another shit passing throughâ??, it seems to apply to Sydney these days, just way too many people to process….
Sydney used to be the most friendly and open city, once upon a timeâ¦.a lesson in urban planning somewhere in this.
mark
i lived in melb for ten years and it took me awhile to realise how many melburnians with any $$ would head out of town regularly up to QLD (or OS) for the sun, having endured the low flying grey doona that can sit over the whole of melb for weeks in winter….
i didnt get into the habit, and found that i was just about gagging for the sun to come out by late november…….so you are right about melb/syd flying north thing. they need to do it – for their sanity!
Nah, sorry Mark, there’a a number of painted TSBs in Newtown (in Sydney). I know there’s heaps on Flickr but the sheer amount of photos of street art in Newtown is too much to sift through See here for one anyway.
Great post though
Thanks Georg. Is it the same setup – ie Council allows local artists to paint them?
I don’t know to be honest. I suspect it might be as some of them are quite detailed and painting them would have taken a while. I’m guessing they may have been done in the days when Newtown was part of the now-defunct South Sydney Council. Now it’s split between City of Sydney and Marrickville.
I read a McGahan book just before Christmas because I had been in Brisbane briefly and thought it would be good to read something ‘native’. It gave me a fantastic feel for Brisbane (it was Last Drinks). I much rather read a novel or some poetry about a place than a guidebook.
Great pics Mark – captures exactly what I love about the Bin. I agree its the ambience more than the landmarks – red tin roof and cityscapes from the winding hill streets; the river curling through.
After two weeks back there over Xmas, I’ve been thinking about all this. I was pleased to see, for the first time, that development mania seemed to have trailed off ever so slightly in Brisbane. I hope thats a trend, though the Montague road proposals would seem to suggest otherwise.
And after 5 years in Melbourne, Im only now, over the last year, finding my acquaintance circles no longer completely dominated by ex-Brisbanites, who do tend to congregate. Ive come full circle – after four years of loving the long winter down here, the sheer experience of actual seasons, and not being so damn hot all the time – Im now over it. With the Melbournites, I agree: Its just too damn long. July is a good time to come to Brisbane.
Having said that, wild horses couldnt drag me back to Vegas between January and March. F*ck dat! Thirty years of broiling was more than enough for me.
I do miss surf swimming, hills, deep green foliage, ferries, house parties, and the Vietnamese restaurants in Brisbane. For all the food capital Melbourne hype (and its generally true) – I reckon the Vietnamese aint much chop down here in comparison.
I dont miss: Brisbane’s woeful public transport, the enervating humidity, the frontier style blokes-only pub vibe, the half-degree of seperation, and the weird feeling of walking in time-circles and tripping older versions of myself in the same scenes and locations.
I love both towns, and would love to live in Brisbane from April- October each year. I do find Melbourne friendlier somehow, and it appears to me (though I could be wrong) that women generally feel safer in public at night down here. Thats a pretty good sign for the culture in general.
I actually like that, Lefty E. As you might have gathered from my comments about West End, I like walking down Hardgrave Road and thinking – “that was Sandy’s place, remember when…”. I like the idea of leaving memories all round the city to be discovered later.
Spot on about the climate though – the humidity seems to have hit with a vengeance this week after an implausibly beautiful December. From April to October, though, it’s just lovely and I particularly like the light.
The public transport fortunately is improving in great leaps and bounds. The old never arriving buses did encourage a lot of bus stop talking though. I used to enjoy chatting to old folks at the Gladstone Road bus stop and the endlessly deferred buses also deferring the necessity of actually arriving at work.
I think you’re right about the night/drinking culture, unfortunately.
Thanks, Georg.
One good thing about having one big council for all of Brisvegas is that things like the TSBs happen all over the place and aren’t subjected to the vagaries of shifting council boundaries and alignments.
McGahan’s Last Drinks really does get something very right about Brisbane in the 80s. I live around the corner from the (now ex) motel where the character stayed on his return, and I remember the pubs and the Bowen Hills funeral joint, among very many other things.
Some of his short stories also capture mid 80s Brisbane very well.
What a great post.
It makes me excited about moving to Brisbane, which I’ll be doing in a month. It’s a smaller city than Melbourne, but not less of a city. Sure, it doesn’t have as many bars, cafes, or trams, and I’ll miss my beloved Butterfly Club, but the whole place is brimming with Stuff That Could Happen, rather than Stuff That’s Already Happened, But Slightly Different This Time.
As to the iconic image of Brisbane, I vote for all the palm trees. Seriously, they’re everywhere.
Hey, cool, the amazing kim. If you want an introduction to the best bars, do holler.
Just on Georg’s point about books as an intro to another city, capturing Brisbane’s political and musical past and much of its sense of place is brilliantly done in Andrew Stafford’s excellent Pig City, which I wrote about on another Brisvegas thread back at Troppo in 05:
http://www.clubtroppo.com.au/2004/10/19/dispatch-from-johburg/#comment-12116
Last Drinks said it all for me. McGahan’s best book. For a slighlty older look, there’s a book by Gerard Lee set in the late 70s/ early 80s in brisbane, but the name eludes me.
Agree about Pig City – an incredible work considering the author isnt from Brisbane!
Incidentally, I recall working late as a barman at the Greek Club on New Years Eve 1986/7 (or the next), I think – and turning up to a party at that very house of yours in Kangaroo Point, Mr Bahnisch. As I was walking in, a chair flew off the verandah and zapped on the power lines out the front. I thought “Alrighty – chocks away!…”
A rambly old riverside classic, that house.
Heh.
That was a party and a half, Lefty E. 87, it was.
I wasn’t so happy when the cops came round the next day and made me sweep all the broken glass off the road in 35 degree heat. I mean the people throwing stuff weren’t my friends! We had to dislodge the chairs by throwing more chairs at them.
I was really chuffed that that house had greater staying power than many of its neighbours which succumbed to the apartmentisation of Kangaroo Point. I think it made it into the 21st century.
Kangaroo Point’s transformation is probably the biggest development negative for Brisvegas.
My computer is from Queensland so it’s very slow. The photo of the storm clouds is great, but can’t see the rest.
Sydney is an uppity hole.
*laugh* I remember that aspect of the Zoo – although sometimes the food was actually reasonable.
Havn’t read the comments – will have to a little later on (work beckons!).
Something that strikes me about Brisbane whenever I go up there is that it’s almost like a giant family (I spent most of my years till I was 26 in brissie.) I could imagine retiring there (if only it was less hot and humid, which isn’t likely!) because it’s so comfortable.
“We had to dislodge the chairs by throwing more chairs at them.”
There’ll be a job for you in the Bush strategic offices yet!
meanwhile, the funky little cartoon paintings on the TSB pictured at the top look mysteriously like the doodles that one of my colleagues habitually scrawls on things. Perhaps she can get a moonlighting gig in Brisbane as an urban decorator…
I think it’s more of a public service than a paying gig, j_p_z
Btw, the link in my post to the TSBs is to the flickr pool thereof – well worth a browse.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/brisbane_tsbs/pool/
One of the nice things about people’s enthusiasm to document them on flickr is that they get repainted from time to time:
eg – this one taken by a friend of mine:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lightsight/251914145/in/pool-brisbane_tsbs/
yeah agreed, lovely post mark
it’s funny reading all these posts from people I knew at uni … I was always a few years below you Mark so I used to see you at student union events, refectory scrums, etc
when I started uni in the arly 90′s there was still a huge part of that Old Brisbane left … does anyone remember the old Regatta? I loved it when it was still an old man’s pub and you could sit out the back on the plastic chairs and watch the February rain tumble endlessly into the river
many of us will remember the old Valley, too, before it became the glitzed-up haunt of rugby jocks in fashion t-shirts … a seedy but oddly charming place filled with Fitzgerald types and young kids just getting into the expanding music scene. Stafford describes the scene well when he talks about the old Zoo, and Babble-On, in the city
incidentally, Andrew Stafford lived in Brisbane for quite some time. I remember 4ZZZ market Day in 1995, when the lead singer from Hateman dedicated a song “Andrew Fucking Stafford.” Stafford used to write incisive reviews for Time Off around that time, and had apparently penned something less than congratulatory a few weeks previously.
I was pleased to see the old put-put ferries got a deserving mention too, an old salt neighbour of mine used to drive the UQ/Dutton park ferry for ages … now they have the new bridge of course. I remember him telling tales of the river in ’74, when the water was up to the first floor of the UQ library, apparently the river simply cut straight across the entire playing fields from near the St lucia golf course to approx where the BBC boat shed is now …
It wasn’t really until the mid-90′s that gentrification set in, in earnest. In 1995 I moved into a huge 100-year old Queenslander in Petrie Tce for $45 a week. It was very Birmingham. Several of my flatmates were using smack, but I was too naive to realise what the singular lack of teaspoons in the cultery drawer meant … I’d only lived there 4 weeks before we got raided.
When we started the Straight Out of Brisbane festival in an old warehouse behind The Zoo in 2002, it seemed like a lot of that culture was still around in Brisbane, but by 2006 I think we can say it had finally vanished … we started getting punters abusing us for how dirty the toilets were, and how there weren’t enough Sydney bands playing on the bill … times change!
I enjoyed living in 80′s brisbane with the left subculture in the leaning houses with the peeling paint. The artists, leftists, students and the migrants agin’ the pigs and the pollies. I think said groups made the inner city hip and cool and were ultimately colonists of the arrival of the yuppies, shmick cafes, townhouses and the inner city reno-boom. Now having shifted my demographic from the former to the latter (if no longer young) I think there are many advantages of the changes.
For example Brisbane’s beautiful wooden houses are being preserved, part (all?) of the hated world Expo site got turned into an extremely pleasant inner urban parkland with free swimming pools, outdoor movies etc, city cats, outdoor eating (that was a policy change bought about by
a labour council post Sally-Anne I understand) and inner city state schools are improving as families move back from the burbs.
But I agree it is sad that “alternative” culture has decreased over this time.
Thanks, Ben.
The loos at Rics are still holding out against the tide I note!
And agreed about the Regatta – I used to go there with some friends in the mid 90s when it was just about dead except for the old blokes – play a game of pool and have a scotch or three on the back deck.
Tony, I’m by no means negative about today’s Brisbane – to some degree I was playing off the ideas Mel had in her post. It does seem to have become a more conservative joint in many ways though – I think Ben’s right – there’s been quite a quick shift over the last few years.
Brisbane has changed a lot.
This is very much reflected in Stafford’s book.
He notes, for example, that after the end of JBP’s rule, 4ZZZ struggled to find a reason to exist. It still does exist, of course.
Also, the music has changed a lot.
Alternative culture always gets mainstreamed.
It’s up to Brisbane’s arty types to create a new “alternative” (whatever that means today).
Tony said:
I agree on the inner-city public schools, West End Primary is now a fantastic school, according to my mum who is a primary school principal herself, and schools like Ithaca Creek and Petrie Tce which were shrinking have started to grow again.
The move to allow outdoor eating was a huge boon to local trade – on some measures, brisbane has a higher-density of cafes than Melbourne (though I still think Melbourne’s are much better, on average). And ten years of state and local Labor governments have meant some serious investment in Big Art Buildings, which on balance is a great thing
But as mark pointed out, the underground/alternative vibe has just about disappeared … and unlike melbourne, we haven’t had an explosion in cute little bars and charismatic eateries to balance it.
I blame licensing law, which is far stricter here than melbourne. Indeed, now that NSW looks to be deregulating finally (and only over the obstreprous opposition of Clubs NSW), Qld will soon be back to having the most over-regulated licensing laws in Australia (I hear WA is pretty strict too).
The result? It’s almost impossible to comply with the licensing laws as a small bar; only the big clubs can afford it. So we aggregate enormous night-clubs like Family in the Valley, to the exclusion of the diverse bar culture that drives the music and arts scene in places like Melbourne or Tokyo.
one last thing: the Expo 88 redevelopment ripped out much of the character building on Brisbane’s southern river edge. This could have evolved in time into a genuinely interesting place for bars, artists and creative businesses, like Williamsburg in Brooklyn. I think Southbank has been an absolute disaster for Brisbane, urban-planning wise.
It was Jane Jacobs who first pointed out you need old buildings as well as new buildings for a really vibrant city.
Oh and I can see the pictures now.
I love those little old Queenslanders (and I’m not talking about my mum).
The lady with the paint all over herself brings out the old Queenslander in me.
“Never seen art like that in my day, young lady. Don’t you worry about that”.
This is both interesting and weird for me. People have kept trying to pin me as a ‘Brisbane writer’, but the first time I saw the UQ campus was in 1990. I got lost (really!) in that funny dog-leg in Land St and wound up near the brewery. Logan City never felt like Brisbane, although we had the same ambivalent relationship with the ‘pigs’ (but for different reasons). Our fight was never overtly political – not until Goss tried to stick a bypass through the only decent piece of greenery in Logan City (Daisy Hill State forest). All these erstwhile safe Labor seats rebelled. One local member was a minister who refused to live in Logan, camping in Toowong instead. She copped a 21% swing.
Stories about the western suburbs of Sydney have always resonated more strongly for me; I was as much an outsider in Brisbane as someone from another state. Just from living an hour down the road.
Nah, WA’s licensing laws are the wackiest in Australia. By a long shop. Bottleshops have only been allowed to open on Sundays for about three weeks now. And there are virtually no bars/restaurants with outdoor eating areas, cafes can’t sell booze, yadda yadda.
Actually, I think our liquors laws were wacky, I’m pretty sure the State Govt passed a whole raft of legislation late last year making them less draconion. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.
Yes, Helen, that’s because you’re like Savage Garden.
Any success from the “fringes” (for example, Logan City) Brisbanites will claim.
All this talk about Bris is making me sad.
I came down for Uni and left in 93. Returing in 2001 it was like a different place.
Alternative was the new mainstream. The valley wasn’t scary any more.
Sure I miss the old Funkyard, the New Funkyard, Picasso’s in Spring Hill, Options, and the LIvid Festival at Davies Park, but i dont go out dancing too much these days anyway.
Brisbane is a thoroughly fabulous city – the only problem is the music scene has too much talent to get your head around. (I cant decide between Dave McCormack and sixfthick tonite…..)
Writing about my impressions and memories of Brisbane would take a very long time! By the by, I was in Adelaide for New Years Eve and it reminded me of a small Brisbane about 15 years ago. The central part of Adelaide inside the parklands is very small – you can walk north south or east west across it in about 20 minutes!
I really like the painted traffic signal boxes in Brisbane – it’s a great idea that I suggested to the Sydney City Council (and got back the standard boring reply saying no). A friend of Mr T and I was part of a group that painted buddhist symbols on the TSB below All Hallows a couple of years ago.
About this part of the post:
I don’t know if this aspect of Sydney culture was imported into areas like the James St strip – my feeling is that it would be hard for many places in Brisbane to sustain that kind of behaviour as the population is so much smaller that Sydney and there’s less flashiness and money in Brisbane. In any event, if those places open up, they open up.
I find it hard to say that parts of Brisbane remind me of parts of Sydney. It always strikes me that most of Brisbane consists of dwellings surrounded by land and that just isn’t true for a great part of Sydney, especially its older parts.
Ben, I think ZZZ lost it’s way *mostly* because of JJJ arriving in late ’88 – that coincided with The Eviction and the demise of the Nats, but JJJ broke ZZZ’s monopoly on non-mainstream rock/pop radio and more importantly they took all the sponsorship for touring acts. ‘ZZZ presents’ was the only game in town for 23 years then overnight they couldn’t get a look-in any more. (The rise of rooArt fits into that story as well but that’s a whole other post). Related to that, I do *love* that ZZZ was able to assert trademark rights to “The Hot 100″ and forced JJJ to retreat to the “The Hottest 100″. A tiny victory, but sweet.
By God, those couple of years either side of 1989 were insane.
I am inclined to think that the greatest achievement of the Goss government was the changes to the licensing laws that allowed footpath dining. Anyone else for a reform that had a bigger effect on the regular lives of ordinary people?
As for South Bank, well I’m in two minds. It’s a fantastic public space, particularly if you have kids. But I agree with a lot of the criticisms from a planning POV. It’s another example of how the planners simply cannot cope with the river. The city nowhere engages with the river, instead we cut it off with expressways, walls of highrises (have you noticed it’s not possible to see the Story bridge from Eagle/Queen streets any longer?) and oddly fetishised ‘special locations’ like South Bank, which is itself cut off from the Southside by Grey Street.
And Grey Street is an absolute disaster, with buildings like the Conservatorium are astonishingly badly done (for those who haven’t seen it, the street-front of the Con is a blank concrete wall a block long and three stories high.)
OK enough from me now. I need another beer.
If you want to paint a traffic signal box, all the details for how to get permission from the council are here.
Just a stimulus to your memory SL – I’m 100% certain the first time I ever met you was when I was sitting behind the Debating Society’s stall opposite the Women’s Fountain (between the Undergrad Library and Union Road) in O Week 1989. I might be wrong though – it may have been 1990 – but I was sure you were around for the Brazil antics in 89.
Whereas us Melburnians are comfortably
numbsmug about living in a first rate second rate city.But enough of this municipal dick measuring contest. There are only five ultimate cities in the world – London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo and New York, New York. Cities for grownups who have seen everything and look forward to more of what they haven’t seen yet.
Discussing anywhere else is just argy-bargy about quality of life, not about quality of metropoli.
I remember that chair stuck on the power line, Mark!
I came to Brisbane in 1954 as a teenager going to boarding school in Indooroopilly. That was way before they built the riverside expressway. From memory there was a whole row of Moreton Bay figs along the river’s edge at North Quay. And I remember sitting in the dentist’s chair on the fifth floor of the Penney’s Building in Queen Street and you could see clear through to the river past the Botanical Gardens to the cliffs of Kangaroo Point and beyond. We’ve lost some of the river-city interpenetration, but now we have riverside walkways and such. The whole walkway/bike path along Coronation Drive was only opened up after the 1974 flood.
For icons, it used to be the City Hall tower, which you could see from everywhere as the tallest building was about 7 storeys. Also Cloudlands (Bowen Hills) and possibly Red Comb House with the red neon rooster (Roma Street), both long demolished.
One of the outstanding features of Brisbane is the penetration of wildlife through the suburbs. There really are a lot of trees among the houses. Last year I saw a scrub turkey in Spring Hill (about a kilometre from the GPO).
The opening of the Queen Street Mall and the Myer Centre were both 1988 Expo things and perhaps mark a milestone in the development of the central city. And the arts/library/museum/theatre precinct a few years earlier. Before that the suburban/regional centres were emptying the CBD out. In the last decade or so the building of units in and around the CBD area has located a permanent population there.
It just keeps changing, but I love it.
Although dropping acid in a sprawling ramshackle Queenslander on Vulture St before heading off through a sultry Brisbane night to see Xero and Pel Mel at some Q Uni Refectory gig did have its own unique charm.
I think I agree with Nabs. Those bigguns are the classics that the others seem to aspire to.
What is the best of the B-list? Vienna, Berlin, San Francisco, LA, Melbourne, Sydney, Vancouver, Seattle, Chicago…
Well, I think I would agree with Rummy if he’d been talking about cities – you go with the metropoli you have, not the metropoli you want. There’s nothing wrong I think with talking about the culture, sociology and history of non-world cities. Just because they’re not world cities, they have some unique urban qualities the megalopoli can never have.
Brian, I must dig out of flickr a bloke’s page who’s transferred a whole lot of slides of Brisbane and other Australian cities in 1959 into photos and posted them.
“There’s nothing wrong I think with talking about the culture, sociology and history of non-world cities.”
Yes, well certainly the way you go on about Brisbane, a very interesting city that only over the last couple of decades is having its history and general vibe treated with some thought, effort and inspiration.
It’s a city just waiting for a home grown Peter Ackroyd or Iain Sinclair, as are Melbourne and Sydney. John Birmingham sorta had a good stab that kinda way at Sydney with ‘Leviathan’ but was handicapped by the fact he was an Harbour City immigrant who had to write for a living and didn’t grow up with that city engrained under his fingernails. ‘Leviathan’ is a great read but not an eyeopening one and great books about interesting cities really have to jack open the eyelids of even people who live there.
And stop thinking of books Mark. Think the BrisPaneDVD – strolling through Paddington and Spring Hill, laying out your rave about how the pitless summer sun and fucked up city fathers drove everyone young, creative and funky indoors and out of their minds, intercutting with bleached Go-BeTweenies et al clips and sharply edited interviews with the door bitichs at Cloudlands and a rather faded Tex Perkins and Wayne Goss.
Then jump cut to hot new Brissie bands performing at great local live venues. Oh wait, you can’t. They all moved to Sydney for the money and Melbourne for the lifestyle.
Good idea about the dvd, Nabs, but you’re wrong about the bands.
http://www.brispop.com/
“Good idea about the dvd, Nabs, but you’re wrong about the bands.”
Name a hot, or at least humid, Brissie Band that advanced its career/momentum by staying in Brisbane.
Nope, Mark – unless I’ve got a stunt double! Although I finished yr 12 in 88 (and finished up with one of those cloying Bicentennial Diaries as a result – remember those?), I didn’t turn up at UQ until 1990. I wished I’d been round for Brazil, but alas it wasn’t to be.
“Name a hot, or at least humid, Brissie Band that advanced its career/momentum by staying in Brisbane.”
Regurgitator and Powderfinger jump immediately to mind, but that’s mostly ’cause I am *so* not up with what the young people are listening to these days.
d
Your memory of which year it was would be better than mine, SL!
Nabs, I think what I meant was that we’re still an incubator for bands. Yes, they go away and leave us very often.
I was thinking further about Southbank. I wasn’t all that fussed with the redevelopment, but it seems a popular family spot.
As to leaving it as it was, you have to realise that it is a flood plain and went under in 1974. The State Library had it’s Country Extension Service there (collections to support country libraries). They lost the lot, but luckily the State Librarian had just insured it a month before the flood. With the payout they reconfigured the service and automated it with the system that was then used for the whole State Library.
When Australia was offered Expo none of the other states wanted it. Jo immediately put up his hand no doubt without the foggiest idea of where and how it would be done. Given the need to put Expo somewhere, Southbank was a good solution and the site worked well.
Of course a large adjacent area was developed into the Convention Centre, which also works well (if you’re not in a wheel chair).
You should try that in Sydney, Mark (well, of course you cant … but). It’s more like … ‘there’s the freeway that runs over the squat we all lived in for 7 years’, ‘that’s the block of flats built on the block where that big warehouse was that we broke into and put that gig on in 88′ and so on.
Nowadays Sydney has less bands than Brisbane. If you were in a band I don’t think moving to Sydney (as opposed to Melbourne) would be a good career move unless you were already well established.
I also don’t fully understand comments about inter-city immigrants not really mixing? I moved to Sydney in my early teenage years and afterwards (i.e. post-17) always had a mixture of locals and immigrants in my set of friends. Big Perth contingent but also Brisbane and Adelaide people. Now in Brisbane I know people here from locals to Melbourne, Gold Coast, and overseas immigrants – not just through my workplace or my partner’s either. I also know that if I moved to Melbourne there’d be a similar network of people – some of which are Sydney immigrants but others are natives. In some way it is possibly the music industry contacts … or maybe Lisa’s academic networks.
Apropos of all this, Pulp’s ‘Mile End’ is playing on the stereo .. “nobody wants to be your friend / cause you’re not from round here, / ooh – as if that was / something to be proud about.”
Down by the playing fields, someone sets a car on fire.
LeftyE…gerard lee book might be “True Love and How To Get It”, I can’t find a synopsis anywhere to confirm, and have long ago culled bookshelves ( no doubt folks will remember west end’s emma’s 2nd hand bookshop, a revenue raising option of last resort)….while in temps perdu mode, anyone remember whitechairs?… not far from that other ex-institution Eliz Street arcade with lloyds 2′nd hand bookshop, and , shudder, the red and black.
For my money brismuse-wise, it is, was, and ever will probably be, Ed K,… like berger(?) paints he just keeps on keeping on. Oxley Creek Cowboys ha ha ha.
For the seriously born-agin nostalgics, the (ZOO) recording of the recent grant/gobies tribute is @ mms://media3.abc.net.au/triple-j/mod/latw/gobetweens.wma (second song is Lee Remick, orig has the immortal “she comes from ireland she’s very beautiful, I come from brisbane I’m quite plain”) and while you’er in that sort of Brisso mood, http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=go-betweens is a bit of a goldmine.
Who gives a toss about eleanor schonell, how pathetic was it naming the bridge after her instead of Grant? I suppose in Brisqland more than most, he who pays the piper calls the tune, the tunesmiths themselves can get stuffed.
Sincerely, GoodToBeWithYou
Hey Darryl, did you edit Semper Floreat? What year was that?
Thanks goodtobewithyou, that’s the one. A sort of precursor to grunge fiction, that book.
Yes Ben, in 1992 I was Editor of the [UQ] Union Newspaper. That was the Pokeyfish (fish who is a fish) ticket with Martin, Phil (and Lainey), if you were around to recall such things. *sigh* another dirty secret revealed. Just as well I have a seemingly limitless supply.
d
Lordy, is it that long ago? Aarrggghhh!
Ha! Next year is the 20th Anniversary of Victoria Brazil and Julian Sheezle et al taking control of the Union. (Which of course means *this* year marks twenty years since Dirk Moses and old what’s-his-face were elected to the Presidency and Treasury respectively). Twenty years my friend.
The strangest thing about that realisation, I think, is that zzz has been off-campus for more than half its life.
Yeah, who was that again?
We should organise a reunion. At least we know where to get in touch with young Mr Sheezel! (and Dr Moses for that matter…)
Mark… I have discovered that Canberra and Sydney are also painting TSB! In some ways this is worrying to me… I would have liked it to be one of the quirky things about Brisbane for visitors to see. And yes… I am back from holidays now.
Carol, let’s just claim that it’s a quirky idea that we invented and other cities are scrambling to catch up!
Yes please do!! I’d love to tag along
Btw i met Geoff Ch. through work a short while back (which lead to a meeting with Paul Barry but thats another story ..), and he was so sweet!
I was cleaning out the spare room last night and found my bound 1992 Sempers. I had a bit of a flick through them for the first time in years, particularly the Union election statements, ’cause quite a few of the ‘old gang’ are now in Parliaments or in various political positions around the country.
I bring this up, because *totally* by chance, I saw SL’s candidate’s statement for PG rep on the Union council in which she wrote that 1993 would be her fifth year at UQ. That means you were on campus for Victoria Brazil in 1989.
Not that it’s all that important, but Mark’s memory looks to be correct, based on what you wrote 3 and half years later.
d
ooo darryl or Mark or anyone, do you still have the 91 SF with the election noms per chance? I’ve love to see them again! (Yes i’m there, dumb photo, dumb statement i’m sure, as an independent – some of my fanatical ‘right’ friends nom’ed me and wrote my statement without even telling me. I do remember being quite pissed off at their audacity and immediately went over and changed it..i was sooo not impressed and let them know it.)
I don’t think so, SG. But the bound copies of Semper are in the UQ library.
Did I ever mention here that I did my year 10 (or 11, can’t remember) work experience at Semper. It would have been in ’94 or ’95…
Who were the eds?
I really can’t remember anymore, I’ve been thinking about that for a day or so now… My lasting memories of that week were:
1) Uni girls were (still are) the hotness
2) 1984 is a good book
3) That being editor of Semper paid almost exactly the same as the dole