Photo credit: me. A larger version of the image can be seen here by clicking on full view once inside the gallery.
The latest issue of Griffith REVIEW - Hidden Queensland - touches on a number of subjects close to my heart. In framing the issue, editor Julianne Schultz opens her introduction with a quote from a “well-connected insider” who expressed puzzlement in the lead up to the 2007 federal election - what did he know of Kevin Rudd and the rest of the crew from the North who might soon be moving into the Canberra corridors of power? Had they been from Melbourne, Sydney or “even Adelaide”, they’d have been on the radar. But what had been happening to transform a bastion of illiberality into the new centre of the “reforming Centre” in the two decades when he hadn’t been looking?
Schultz makes the point - one reinforced and treated in some detail by Ray Evans in his contribution - that the canon of Australian national history is replete with texts which devote a scant few pages at best to Queensland’s place in our common story. While Schultz is concerned to argue that the state often lampooned for its scorn for education in fact harbours a considerable intellectual tradition, other contributors also throw some light on why the Sunshine State might perhaps be a place of secrets and darkness. Maybe as she suggests in her opening essay ‘Disruptive Influences’, the attitude of reluctance to cast pearls before swine, and the chip on the shoulder that is the mirror image of Southerners’ contempt, have been traditionally attributed to the sub tropical climate. But the sense that Queensland’s an elusive sort of place is teased out in greater detail in both that essay and the issue as a whole.
Probably of most interest to those concerned with matters political will be Schultz’s placing Kevin Rudd’s roles as a staffer to Wayne Goss and subsequently a senior bureaucrat within the context of the political dynamics of the time. I’m inclined to think that she’s a bit less critical than perhaps she could have been of the Goss government, and in particular there’s an implication which is not really developed that Goss really missed the boat in terms of doing anything to diversify and modernise the state’s economy. That urgent task that had to await Peter Beattie. The heavy emphasis on process is there, and it’s defended - with some justice - in terms of the urgent need to update and reform corrupt and ossified institutions and governmental structures. Though again I think there’s something missing in terms of recognising the aspects of the pre-Goss era in the public service that were worthwhile, and the heavy cost from the insensitivity with which many of these reforms were implemented by pollies and bureaucrats in a hurry.
She does capture well both the dialectic between the Joh era repression and its formative influence on a generation of bureaucrats, pollies and activists - a story that I think needs more elaboration - and the particularly closed nature of power and elites in Brisbane, something which as she rightly observes, hasn’t exactly shifted to the shiny new meritocracy that was envisaged as much as one might have hoped.
But nevertheless, Schultz’s essay is full of insight, and as I think she herself implies, it treats of themes about which so little has been written that it functions as an incitement to others to respond and to write their own versions of recent Queensland history. Her essay can be accessed on the web via this link.
Looking back over the issue as a whole, some of its most memorable moments for me came from reading the reminiscences and memoirs - particularly those by authors who like me were growing up in the Brisbane of the 1980s. I want to draw particular attention to Edwina Shaw’s story ‘Busted’ - a fine piece of writing and one whose characters and events will be instantly recognisable to anyone who was a lefty student a couple of decades or so ago. But I’d urge folks to get hold of the whole issue - it’s an excellently put together compendium of a number of different and compelling perspectives on its theme.
NB: There are a range of events around the themes of this issue at the Melbourne and Brisbane Writers’ Festivals, and at Gleebooks in Sydney. Details are here.
i’ll be working the gleebooks event;)
I was sent a complementary copy from the publishers, courtesy of my sister, one of the contributors to this edition. Still haven’t finished reading it all, but can honestly say it’s a glorious, hilarious, heartbreaking, thought-provoking, intellectually rich collection. It’s also personally satisfying seeing the placement of many new pieces of information and analysis in the historical jigsaw.
Kudos and thanks to the editor, Julianne Schultz. Well done madam, though boo-hiss to confreres who didn’t pick up the multiple typos, missing words, etc in the otherwise excellent, kick-ass editorial lead.
This is creepy Mark. You’re always posting photos of bits of my past. That’s the place where I got my first suit. Who are you? Who do you work for?
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Operation Grandslam for instance?
Sounds cool, I’m in!
Naturally, I take it we’ve all read Radical Brisbane by Evans & Ferrier.
Yep.
And if you haven’t read Ray’s “A History of Queensland” released last year by Cambridge Uni Press, Lefty E, I’d highly recommend it!
So Brissy has its own long standing facades stretching back to the 1980’s it seems.
A time when facadism was all the rage in Sydney but thankfully now completed or at least architecturally discredited.
From a more human angle I can recall harbouring a few political refugees from Joh’s Queensland in the mid to late 1970’s…quiet but traumatised students coming to grips with Sydney’s brashness, (despite a lingering Summary Offenses Act) and the longer twilights. Askin’s criminal regime was giving way to Wran’s supposed enlightenment. It was painful that the terror was still going on north of the Tweed. It would be interesting to somehow measure this exodus and the longer term consequences it held for politics in the post Joh world. Maybe some clues in those remaining facades.
pablo, Sallyane Atkinson the Liberal Mayor from 85 onwards kicked off the knock everything but the facade boom. The Myer Centre is all facade along the Queen Street frontage. Two good pubs died to make the temple of shopping! These ones are still standing from the 80s with nothing behind them.
Yes Mark, Sydney’s facades were a belated reaction to what was getting indiscriminately knocked over in the 1970’s boom. The Green Bans were a union response. It is amazing to me that until about 1977 Sydney City Council had no archivist taking photos of buildings that were the subject of Development Approvals before SCC planners. Such an ommission isn’t in the same league as Joh demolishing the Exchange? hotel in the middle of the night but I can still remember the effect that had on my northern emigre friends, let alone myself. Has anyone ever suggested a ‘truth and reconciliation commission’ for Queenslanders affected by that era?
Bellevue Hotel, pablo.
Maybe one of the unsatisfying things about the Goss government (and there were a lot for lefties - that was the time I ceased to be an ALP member) was probably a sense that all the energy and the heartache many suffered (and make no mistake about it, in all sorts of ways, Joh’s regime was in the business of destroying and crippling lives) was supposed to disappear after November 1989 when Labor was elected.
Anyway, I’d have liked to have contributed some thoughts to the Griffith Review issue on this and other things, but time was lacking with my PhD taking priority. I do intend to do some writing on the 80s Brisbane stuff and its aftermath sometime soon I hope.
Good stuff. It would be interesting to hear from the likes of David Malouf, Robyn Davies among others.
Should read Robyn Davidson.
I’m not sure who that is, pablo! As for Malouf, I think he left Brisbane before the 80s - I’m interested in those of us who were around at the time - in part because I think the story of an earlier Brisbane and earlier generations has been told fairly well already.
Mark, Robyn Davidson is the so-called ‘camel lady’ who walked (and rode) from Alice Springs across the desert to the coast of WA with a team of camels, a trip that became a cover story for National Geographic, in 1978 when she was in her mid-20s. She’s written several books and countless articles since, I think lives in London but turns up periodically at Australian writers’ festivals.
I think Griffith REVIEW (despite the fiddly typography of its title — down with upper-case, I say) is the best journal in the country and Julianne Schultz is a fantastic editor — she has a wonderful sense of the gestalt of a magazine issue and she seems to take a huge amount of care in commissioning items that will all fit together like a jigsaw. It’s always a fabulous read.
Thanks for that, Dr Cat!
I was very sternly rebuked by a Griffith REVIEW staffer last time I wrote a post and ommitted the caps. But aside from that, yep, it’s very good value. And Julianne’s a very good editor for a writer to work with, as well as great in the conceptual/planning/etc stakes.
Robyn Davidson also (I think - it’s at home) wrote a Quaterly Essay recently about nomads (herself included).
Ooooh, you poor dears. Luckily nobody from Western Australia, the Northern Territory, South Australia or Tasmania has ever felt overshadowed by the historical dominance of NSW and Victoria.
Ummm, lest anybody get the wrong idea, life in Qld pre 1988 was far from akin to being under the thumb of the KGB. Mention of “refugees” etc is fine as a joke, but is a sick travesty if made other than in jest.
As one who lived in Qld at the time, I can assure readers unfamiliar with Qld that plenty of people (ie most everybody) got on with life (ie had jobs & all other accoutrements of a normal life in a western economy) without ever hearing of the kempetai/gestapo/stasi/kgb/special branch or indeed without ever hearing of, or knowing the existence of the bellevue hotel, or indeed any other pub in Brisbane (or northern NSW, whichever you want to know it as) until after the darned thing was knocked down & then the newspapers wouldn’t shut up about it, however even then it wasn’t on the radar as much as New York, London, or any other of a multitude of places which one had heard of but was unlikely to ever meet in person.
Persons whose life is major anti-government wank (regardless of which free western government they may live under) may differ in opinion. But I say anyone who believes the Bjekle-Petersen govt to be oppressive needs oh so badly to get a life.
Actually, Mark, I thought of you on Monday when I walked past this very facade - there is now a development application notice posted on it that I hadn’t noticed before (I had seen your photo and reference to the facade some months ago.) Incidentally, I also tend to think of you when I walk past the “John Mills Himself” building in Charlotte Street (near the corner with George St, opposite the giant walnut/diseased prostate sculpture) and wonder whether you have ever photographed it?
Ziggy:
http://phenomenologist.deviantart.com/art/John-Mills-Himself-63293029
http://phenomenologist.deviantart.com/art/No-nephews-on-the-right-63293168
Our library subscribes. This book sized edition is good enough to eat. It has pieces such as Stephen Stockwell’s Voodoo Politics that are mouthwateringly well-written. Jim Soorley is so not amused by this delicious morsel and says it’s all lies. Hah.
SATP, the Bjelke-Petersen govt was world-renowned as one of the most repressive in the civilised world. I worked with a couple of people in about 1973 who’d left Qld purely and simply for that reason.
Of course, the rednecks loved him …
That is certainly my impression too David. FMPOV it was a little tongue in cheek to suggest a ‘truth and reconciliation’ commission and too late in the day for it now but I think it could have been a cathartic exercise, say, following the Fitzgerald Inquiry. Beattie would not have done it - too much ‘reconciliation’ in that memorable shot of him pushing Joh in a wheelchair - and Goss didn’t hang around long enough. But there must be some very poignant stories from that era.
“Two good pubs died to make the temple of shopping!”…
That’d be The New York, ( how bizarre was that Z setup… anyone see The Birthday Party there?) and…
… White Chairs!!!… n’est-ce pas?
Three actually I think. The New York and The Australian Hotel (on Elizabeth St). But also the Carlton (?) on Queen St…
David #21.
I have to agree with you, porn was decidedly difficult to obtain under the Bjelke-Petersen regime, indisputably his greatest crime against human rights.
Who needed porn SATP when you had Catholic priests and brothers obsessively defying their celibacy vows, Big Daddy feudal-era employers fingering the convent gals in their patriarchal care, hapless, gold-toothed street-level flashers and grabbers, creepy peeping toms and casual rapists galore. And that was just the rels!
>>…”also the Carlton (?)”…
True: “The Myer Centre was … the largest urban excavation ever undertaken in Australia to that date … The exterior incorporates the restored facades of four historic buildings previously located on the site. These include Hotel Carlton (1885) the New York Hotel (1860), Newspaper House, from which the Brisbane Telegraph was first published, and the Barry and Roberts department store. “
If memory serves, the Australian on Elizabeth St (more or less opposite the Elizabeth arcade) was a zzz venue in the mid 80s, danny.
>>”If memory serves …”- it really is frighteningly true what they say: if you can remember it, you weren’t there.
Fortunately we now have google and the hive mind to fill in the details, and it would seem your memory does indeed, in this case, serve:
“…Back in my Uni days (mid ’80s) “White Chairs” was the only place to be if you were into alternative music. I think the real name was the Elizabeth St Bar, and it was demolished when the Myer Centre was built. ”
That comes from a useful 2.0/ MSM BrisbaneTimes “blog” - Viva Bris Vegas - where punter’s reminiscences have been collecting over the last 6 months in a project to plot Brisbane’s pub and club family tree. Likewise, stories of
hiddenearlier Brisbane music/venues have been collecting here .SATP - Do you wear white shoes, by any chance?
Bjelke-Petersen’s government was repressive on many levels and deeply corrupt. I’m not just talking about the unavailabilty of weed and porn, here, you understand.
SATP, the infamous Deen Brothers knocked down a good deal more than the Bellevue. One landmark I regret the passing of was Cloudland Ballroom.
Robyn Davidson has homes in Sydney, London and India. The article says she was born at Stanley Park, a cattle station in Miles, Queensland. Chances are she was born at the hospital in Miles. Stanley Park Station is north of Miles between Giligulgul and Guluguba (you can find it in the northwest sector of this map). I grew up a few miles east of there. It was quite civilised country by the 1950s.
There was a lot of good work done in the Public Service in Qld during the Joh era, believe it or not. Back in those days the PS actually did things before it was scrambled, disabled, downsized, outsourced and turned into a policy outfit by Goss’s mob. Not sure they could organise a booze-up in a brewery now.
Brian, perhaps I should have added that Luke Slattery points out in the article he wrote for the issue that Queensland’s lead in areas like music and arts education is an artefact of what public servants were up to pre-Goss.
Danny, thanks so much for the link. I think that’s an excellent idea. Reconstructing the history of clubs and venues is a seriously interesting endeavour!
Thanks for the links, Kim. A fairly pleasant restaurant (Little Singapore?) recently opened up next to the bookshop, so hopefully “John Mills Himself” and that immediate group of quaint buildings will remain standing for years to come.
I’ve seen that restaurant, Ziggy. Worth trying you reckon?
I’ve had lunch there a few times - the food was respectable, and the decor and patrons make for an authentic sort of atmosphere. It’s certainly a lot nicer than the other standard issue noodle bars in that sector.
“Many a Brisbane school or University student sat for their final examinations at temporary desks on the ballroom at Cloudland Ballroom.”… Shudder, indeed. That and the sheep and wool pavilion at the showgrounds - does that mass proto-academic killing fields type of thing still happen?
Back then they’d take 300 or more into first year medicine, and only let 100 or so into second year, and on. You pretty much had to have a commonwealth scholorship, or equivalent senior marks to get in the first place, so it wasn’t lack of a ability being sorted for, just a brutal inroduction to the facts of life: the numbers allowed entre into the professions will be ruthlessly regulated to maintain the market power of the cartels. Today’s medical workforce shortage has been a long time in the making.
But that’s a different sort of hidden Queensland, and not restricted to here.
The other thing about Cloudland was it’s sprung dance floor. In the era of pogo, and slam dancing, it made for an almost gymnastic, albbeit chaotic, moshpit. The only place I know of these days where the experience of the floor itself gets literally jumping is the mezzanine at the Tiv, on a big night.
“plenty of people (ie most everybody) got on with life”
As they did in East Germany, South Africa, Nazi Germany pre 1945, Chile under Pinochet etc etc etc.
As with all of those places, if you didn’t make trouble (as defined by the authorities) in Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland, you were fine.
But so what?
As others have documented, not only was the government profoundly repressive, it was corrupt, easily the most corrupt in Australian history (measured by the number of cabinet ministers who were convicted or corrupt acts).
But worst of all, the coppers were not merely criminally corrupt, they were instrumental in the corrupt and repressive politics as well. This is unlike the coppers in other states, who have just been in it for the money.
Corruption? So what. Neat sidestep from “repression”.
And what would trouble as defined by the authorities (at the time) be?
I lived & worked (on an extremely minimum wage) in Qld during the last several years of the Bjelke-Petersen Regime. That repression of innocents may have been happening was not only not on the radar screen, there are great piles of people who lived their lives in the manner one does in a liberal western democracy, without ever once having an inkling there may have been repression.
If (and it is an “if”) there was actual repression, it sure weren’t applied for anything anybody got up to within 6 degrees of separation of anybody anywhere near to any patch of Qld I strode upon.
SATP, one way the Joh regime affected Queenslanders generally was that he said openly that if you didn’t vote for him you couldn’t expect the Government to do anything for you. This meant neglect of the most basic public services for example in health and education.
You also felt that he really would allow drilling for oil on the Great Barrier Reef if he felt like it.
He was of course notorious for the suppression of any kind of public dissent and you really didn’t know what you needed to do to get a Special Branch file opened on you. Most people who thought about it assumed not very much.
Bjelke-Petersen was Erich Honecker and the Special Branch was the Stasi. They spied on people, arrested them arbitrarily, beat the shit out of them and even administered some hot shots.
Brian, interesting first two paragraphs, but nothing in them amounts to repression.
As an aside, Education & Health Care under Bjelke-Petersen compares very favourbly with what Qld has today.
Drilling for oil on the Great Barrier Reef could be called lots of things, (vandalism, sacrelige, pioneering, far sighted - take your pick) but “repression”?
Suppressing public dissent? Or just not allowing dissenters to occupy a public street, and restricting them to the footpath instead?
“Or just not allowing dissenters to occupy a public street, and restricting them to the footpath instead?”
SATP, you’re name wouldn’t be Ceasescu, would it?
SATP, I wasn’t particularly trying to prove “repression” as such. I was reacting to the phrase “plenty of people (ie most everybody) got on with life”.
But living under Joh was repressive. I can remember as a public servant listening to his rants on the radio and TV and thinking how extraordinary it was that we had to take his ravings seriously. I remember how relieved I felt when he no longer had any power.
I’ve already said we nevertheless did some good in the provision of public services, some world class. It’s just that the priorities were highly political. Of course when the Whitlam money came in education at least priorities were guided by principles of equity, equality of opportunity and need. Civilised, in fact.
Brian, the relevant phrase in the original post was “Joh era repression”.
There is repression and then there is repression. I was commenting with my own observations of the era, that life in Qld largely went ahead unaffected by overt repression. (please read post #17 again, including my parochial & bigoted reference to Brisbane)
Any comparisons with (say) East Germany will serve only to reveal the extreme disparity between repression in Qld and the (very real & very overt) repression which existed in the DDR.
(After that, continuing my observations from that era:) There was no doubt that Qld had extremely dedicated public servants, and that we were blessed with service & advice of a quality which we felt was unlikely to be replicated in other jurisdictions.
The most acute memory of the political “change of guard” was the treatment Goss dished out to the Qld public service. There was a sharp feeling that Qld was being betrayed by Goss, that one of Qld’s most carefully built assets (the human resource of the public service) was being wantonly destroyed by Goss purely for vexatious personal reasons.
That was the moment when the Goss gloss was irreperably tarnished.
There was little doubt that the priorities of the (Bjekle-Petersen) government were highly political, and that some of the general direction of policing and other public services were influenced by the political will of the governing party. (Implementing their political will is of course, what every government does).
In my circle of the time, young men working low wage itinerant jobs, by far the most noticeable and disagreeable impact of the Bjelke-Petersen govt was the extreme difficulty getting hold of decent porn.