Shopping - or trying to - in Queen Street (2007)

In 1919 certain enlightened members of the public, mainly influential business leaders and soldiers returned from the horrors of the First World War, realized they had something in common. Neither group felt much warmth when it came to communists. For repatriated soldiers the situation in Australia was less than ideal. Many returned to their homes to find the jobs they’d been promised either no longer in existence or in the hands of someone else. And with unemployment running at an average of 6.5 per cent there was little hope of finding work in a hurry. Many ex-servicemen became destitute. Thus, when those who did have jobs began striking, the returned soldiers became a little tetchy. They already possessed ill feeling towards strikers, since it was striking seamen who had delayed their return to Australia. In a remarkable example of foresight, business leaders and ex-soldiers alike bared their teeth, narrowed their eyes and pointed their fingers in the same direction – Soviet Russia.

For soldiers and those in the centre and on the right there could be only one explanation for why a person would adopt Marxist ideology – treason. Anyone subscribing to Marxist beliefs was guilty of treachery, subversion, duplicity. In other words, they weren’t very nice people. During the war this idea had been trumpeted by the government and the press. Strikes, they said, and there had been lots of them, were the fault of Communists. I guess they needed someone to blame. “Strikes were by definition unpatriotic,” says historian Josie Castle, “and all strikers disloyal traitors to the war effort. The 1917 revolution in Russia confirmed the most paranoid fears of the right. . . as to the immanence of world revolution.” The result was that a number of clandestine paramilitary organizations were set up, including, in Brisbane, the so-called Anti-Bolshevik Committee of the RSL, which eventually boasted 2000 rabid anti-Communist members, it’s self-professed claim “to fight Bolshevism and to rid Queensland of disloyalty”. Who would have thought it? The Sunshine State a hotbed of Reds, agitators and anarchists. McCarthy should have settled here.

Thus, in March 1919, there occurred what became known as the Red Flag riots, when returned soldiers, mistaking trade unionists for Reds, and, on realizing their mistake, not caring either way, fought a running street battle in the heart of Brisbane. The Brisbane Courier called it “an outburst of loyalty” and described the riot as “magnificent as it was altogether spontaneous”. The streets were filled with “wild and thrilling excitement”. The Courier took perverse pleasure in inciting further disorder, their correspondent writing, “. . . it is quite obvious that the demonstration against the Bolshevik element that slinks through the city is not going to remain where it ended last night. Blood has been spilt, returned soldiers have been wounded, police officers have been injured.” Oh, the indignity of it all. It’s perfectly alright for returned soldiers and police officers to beat the shit out of suspected Communists, but if the alleged Bolsheviks dare to retaliate . . . That night several thousand Brisbanites “roared their approval” over the passing of two resolutions, the first to form an anti-Bolshevik society, the second “to deport all Bolshevik aliens from Australia”. You can almost hear the sound of blood dripping from the tip of the writer’s quill. Imagine sitting down to breakfast tomorrow and reading that in your morning paper.

Brisbane blood, it seems, was set to boil. Because all this mayhem and starkly testosterone-fuelled sword-wielding was in response to nothing more than a pro-Communist meeting held in Queen Street. When Tess and I arrived at the western end of what is now a mall there were crowds of a different sort. Communism had most definitely been purged from the city; capitalism, in the form of young men and women with bulging designer-labeled shopping bags, the firm winner. Queen Street, as we found it, was a temple to the varied gods of consumerism. We entered its folds with glee.

Queen Street Mall is like any other busy shopping district in any other city of Australia. Except here, to right and left, stairs and escalators descend one or more storeys into food courts and shopping centres boasting speciality shops, so that much of Brisbane shopping, depending on your tastes, can be conducted at a subterranean level. Tess and I, being interested in different shopping experiences – I suppose these days you’d call it a “shopping journey” – went our separate ways, agreeing to meet up for lunch. She went looking for clothes – not very difficult in our fashion-obsessed society – while I went in search of anything round, silver and with a hole in the middle.

It took me only a few minutes to get hopelessly lost. I made the mistake of entering one of the ubiquitous underground malls without a ball of twine which I could unwind in order to find my way out. Theseus, of course, being Greek and the son of a king and, by definition, a hero, had not been so foolish. When he entered the labyrinth with the intention of slaying the minotaur he already had an escape plan in mind, provided him by the lovely Ariadne who said, “Venus, the goddess of love and your own chosen goddess, has put it into my heart to do this.”

None of this came to mind as I wandered the labyrinth below Queen Street Mall. Ariadne especially did not come to mind as I stood in Target listening to a dark-haired teenage girl in black trousers and red shirt whining about whether or not she should believe the terrible stories her friends had related to her about her boyfriend, who, it seemed, was shagging every girl unfortunate enough to cross his path. Her companion, a slightly older and less supple-looking woman with stringy dark hair and a gargantuan nose, dressed exactly the same, commiserated and then suggested perhaps the teenager’s friends were exaggerating.

‘Why would they do that?’ the teenager asked.

The older woman shrugged and continued removing shirts from a trolley and hanging them on a clothes rack.

‘They’re my friends,’ the teenage girl said. ‘They wouldn’t lie to me.’

Clearly she had a lot of growing up to do.

Eventually the two of them dropped everything – actually the teenager hadn’t been doing anything in the first place, except for standing with her arms folded, spilling the gory details of her private life – and hugged. What is it about teenage girls? Everywhere you go they’re hugging each other and telling each other they’re the best of friends. They part, go their separate ways, and right round the corner one of them meets someone else, hugs them, and tells them they’re the best of friends. And not once while they’re doing it do they look as though they mean it.

My Target experience says a lot about what has happened to the concept of service in this country. All the while the two young women were discussing the ins-and-outs – literally – of the younger one’s boyfriend’s love life, I was standing not two metres away riffling through a rack of casual pants. Not once did either of them cast even a casual glance in my direction, let alone ask whether I would like some assistance. I was invisible to them. I wanted to say, Listen. I’m the reason you have a job. But I didn’t. I couldn’t be bothered. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve walked out of a shop because a sales assistant has been on the phone while I’ve been waiting to buy something. Customers don’t count for much anymore. Too many times you’re made to feel as though the shop assistants are doing you a favour. Someone should tell them, You’re just a stinking sales clerk, for goodness’ sake! They’d probably get all upset and engage you in a deeply philosophical discussion about the worthy nature of servitude and the western liberal belief in all men (and women) being equal before the law. An ideal opportunity, I think, to remind them that some people are more equal than others. Wondering whatever happened to the idea that the customer is always right I drifted out of Target thinking two things. The customer is only right when he or she treats the sales assistant with the utmost degree of deference and gratefulness, and Target could stick its generic brands of goods up its ass. Though I did buy a pen.

Eventually I found my way back onto a street where the sun was shining overhead, the sky a strip of absolute blue between the stark edges of the buildings. People streamed past me, shoppers and office workers going about their daily grind. It occurred to me that in this age of globalization – or at least nationalization – shopping in a city not your own can be a fairly disappointing experience. I wandered into Borders – close your eyes and you’re in Melbourne or Adelaide, or even London or Birmingham – and spent an hour browsing through the fiction and travel sections. There were a number of books I liked the look of, but thinking of my suitcase and hand luggage, the combined weight of them, I returned the books to the shelf because I knew I’d be able to get those same titles back home in Adelaide without having to cart them halfway across the country. The same could be said for Dymocks. In these chain stores the stock is universal, the atmosphere generic. I understand it’s supposed to make people feel comfortable, safe in the familiar, a home away from home. It left me feeling gloomy and set me in search of more exotic locales.

There was a time when you could visit a city in the safe knowledge there’d be at least one thing – a book or a CD – which you wouldn’t be able to get back home. Twenty years ago I’d visit London and return home to Adelaide with my suitcase weighed down with books. My supreme coup was possessing a Bob Dylan album a whole three months before it was released in Australia. Among a small circle of Dylan fans I was a king, someone to be envied, I spent many hours dubbing the album – no small feat; it was a triple – onto cassette and passing them round. Perhaps that’s what I miss, the cultural cache of being the only person among a rapidly diminishing group to own something everyone else in that elite set wants. And not just wants, but covets. Didn’t it make you feel good . . . Those were grand days. Sadly, they’ve been banished forever, driven out by Amazon and the rapidly increasing pace of globalization. Now you can pretty much get whatever you want, whenever and wherever you want to get it. You don’t even have to leave your house. Anticipation is a thing of the past, instant gratification the catch-cry of the Now. Buying stuff is just no fun anymore.

I thought I’d found a more exotic locale in The American Bookstore in Elizabeth Street. It had been recommended to me by, of all people, a young sales assistant in Dymocks. The American Bookstore was narrow and went back a long way. It had an agreeable aroma of paper, ink and coffee. I was all but rubbing my hands together as I went in off the street, though ultimately this too was to be a disappointing experience. The store had a nice coffee shop at the back, the atmosphere was conducive to sipping lattés and riffling through a potential purchase. I thought there’s nothing better than sitting comfortably in a high-backed armchair, necessarily aged, surrounded by books and a décor – mismatched bookcases, books piled haphazardly on the shelves, aisles too narrow almost to walk down – contributing to the general musty aged feeling. This was more like it. A bookstore which turned its nose up at the conglomerates, which refused to enter into the twenty-first century, which held tightly to values and traditions most people consider lost.

The problem was, there just wasn’t that much to choose from in the way of books. I like to think that my taste in books is a varied one. And I suppose there’s the problem. The chain stores with their large and ever-expanding catalogue and funereal ambience, or the cute-as-hell age-gone-by independents with a limited stock and who (necessity dictates) must charge an arm and a leg for the books they do have. You can’t have it both ways. Another sad fact – perhaps I’m being too harsh – is that all too often when you walk into an independent you’re made to feel as though by allowing you to browse their titles they’re extending you a privilege. There’s a sense you’re being watched. An air of suspicion hangs about the place. You expect to be interrogated about whether you intend buying a book you’re thumbing through. Contrary to this, unlike the employees of Target those in the book conglomerates are invariably friendly and eager to do as much as they can to help you. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that in a roundabout fashion their jobs don’t depend on how many books they sell. Finally – I never fail to be surprised by this – chain store employees are generally so knowledgeable about the books they sell. It must be difficult owning an independent these days. I don’t envy them. My last gripe . . . In Borders or Dymocks I’ve never seen a sign which says, in bold black uneven texta-ed letters,

PLEASE REFRAIN
FROM HANDLING
THE MERCHANDISE

I once saw just such a sign in a privately-owned bookstore in Adelaide. When I chose to ignore the warning and picked up an Ian Fleming the woman behind the counter growled at me for not reading the sign and barked the price of the book. In a bookstore! Go figure . . .

That night, after my wife and I had returned to our hotel, I went out onto the balcony to admire the view and there, sitting under the shelter, was the man who’d fed the Ibis that morning. His hair, tucked under a knitted hat, was long and unruly, his beard thick and matted. He wore a check shirt and what looked like track pants. He sat straight-backed on a wooden bench, his thick hands draped over his knees. At his feet stood a single bag bursting at the seams. The Van People must be coming back, I thought. Only they didn’t and after a time I realized he must have been sitting there all day watching the world go by.