Lazing at South Bank

Brisbane is a city built on hills and this, combined with the fact so many seem to walk wherever they want to go, is perhaps why you see so few overweight people. Many of them seem to be in at least some stage of good health. In Edwards Park, walking down a long flight of stairs – we counted them; there were ten sets of steps – flanked either side by densely foliaged trees that in some places met overhead to form a ceiling, we witnessed a young well-formed couple in sports clothing jogging up from the street below. They went by us, gasping and dripping sweat, and when they reached the top they stood doubled over, hands clamping their knees, and wheezing. The girl sucked greedily on a water bottle. Then, inexplicably, they started laughing, which suggested they were either extremely pleased with themselves and each other for having accomplished such an impressive feat, or they were mad. I opted for the latter explanation for after walking leisurely back down the entire collection of steps – joking, feeling smug, swapping stories about how good they felt, about how much they’d achieved, and all those lovely things most of us in the non-exercise world will never know anything about – they turned round, readied themselves, smiled at each other in taunting fashion as though daring each other on, and ran all the way back up again. Oh, how gleeful they were as their shiny sweat-soaked limbs carried them upwards. My legs would have been shiny too if I’d done the same thing. The only difference between them and me would have been the not insignificant fact that I would have been sprawled across the concrete, most probably on the second flight of stairs, most likely dead or close to it.

Needless to say, we reached the bottom like most sane people do. We walked. And we didn’t turn round and go back up again. But as we continued down hill I turned round and saw the two joggers at it again. Going up for a third time. The only consolation was that I had a good twenty or more years on them.

‘I’d be able to do that if I was their age,’ I told my wife, and knowing better she merely nodded and didn’t say anything.

Walking the Brisbane streets you can’t help but admire the architecture – particularly the old-style Queenslanders. These largely wooden buildings were constructed on stilts, the idea being the higher they are the easier it is for them to catch the evening breeze. Windows swing open from the side, unlike their southern cousins, which pivot outwards from fixed hinges at the top. This seems a quaint idea and gives the walker the feeling they are strolling through a city of the 1920s – except, of course, for the ultramodern production-line cars, the neon signs, and, oh yes, glass and steel skyscrapers sprouting up everywhere you look. No two Queenslanders are the same, either in design or presentation. In a single row you might have a completely blue house, then a yellow, followed by a white. In some streets it is not uncommon to see red or orange or even both. And then there are all the different shades of the same colour. This makes for a very interesting walking tour. It’s like walking through a fairyland. At any moment you expect to see tiny people in tutus come parading along the footpath.

Most houses shun the notion of a front yard. When you open the front door your steps almost invariably touch down at the edge of the pavement. The people who reside there, it appears, do all their living out back, since from the front there are no signs of life. You imagine large semi-tropical gardens filled with palms and frangipanis, with only a narrow area of lawn, the shrubs and bushes taking over, spreading towards the centre like furtive creatures intent on taking over.

Brisbane streets put you in mind of Edward Hopper, the American painter of New England houses. He would, you’re convinced, have enjoyed setting up his easel on the corner of Wickham Terrace , perhaps below the old Observatory, and looking over towards the old mansion currently undergoing renovations at the hands of workmen who understand and value the artistry of workmanship and the obsolete lives of former inhabitants. If you squint into the sun you can see him, brown felt hat tilted towards the back of his head, paint brush poised. Hopper would have appreciated the style of Brisbane.

Closer to the river, especially along North Quay and the Riverside Expressway, the story is a different one. Here skyscrapers crowd together and compete for dominance. This is a quarter of harsh lines and abrupt angles, of polished glass and sheer sides. It is a world of the ultra-modern, of high finance and power broking, of ulcers and heart problems, of enforced retirement and premature death. People are forgotten here. The environment, soulless and unfeeling as it is, is everything. People are made to fit in, the battle between function and form has long been lost, and form has scarpered along the river bank with its aesthetic tail between its legs. Only a few streets away, the streets where the Queenslanders reign, the ambient environment is one of the people, for the people. There your humanity is strengthened, you feel like you belong to something, to someone. Unlike that other place, where your humanity is neutralized, where you become a faceless prole, that unfortunate Orwellian creature, your worth equates exactly with the level at which you perform, where – and this is the worst thing – unlike Elvis you are forgotten as soon as you leave the building.

Such distinctions fade into insignificance when, having traversed Victoria Bridge, you arrive at South Bank. Whenever I told anyone I was going to Brisbane they all said, ‘You must visit South Bank.’ There seemed to be a peculiar excitement related to the idea of it.

‘It is the most wonderful place,’ someone said. At any moment I expected them to shut their eyes tightly, clench their fists into balls, begin clicking their heels together, say, There’s no place like South Bank . . . There’s no place like South Bank . . . There’s no place . . .

They weren’t wrong.

The experience began as we crossed Victoria Bridge. There’s something peculiarly exciting about standing at the rail of a substantially-sized bridge and staring down into the water. A part of you is tempted to climb onto the rail and send yourself flying into space, just to see what happens. Of course, we were high enough that any attempt would almost certainly have ended in death. Or at least quite a significant degree of maiming. The worrying thing about committing suicide by bridge is that you can never be sure which outcome will be yours. If you’re so hell bent on ending your life, how cruel and unfair it would be to wake up in hospital a permanent cripple. Your options will have been diminished. It would be so much more difficult to kill yourself when you’re confined to a bed. But I suppose if you’ve taken the trouble to climb onto the rail and you’re standing on the edge with the intention of jumping you’re thinking is probably not so lucid. Most likely rationality is not something which has attached itself to you.

I blame The Monkees. Throughout most of the 1970s, before television stations transmitted non-stop day and night, normal programming would end at about midnight. You knew the stations were about to close up for the night when the national anthem came on. A low-budget video clip of Advance Australia Fair showing kangaroos and wallabies, stockmen in hats, sheep herding through paddocks, the mighty Murray (when it had water), picturesque city scenes. Then the picture would simply turn in on itself, receding to a small black dot followed by a grey ever-shifting ocean of dots and lines accompanied by white noise. And shift workers all across the nation – nurses, security guards, factory hands on their tea break – would sigh, pull out their newspapers and begin doing the crosswords. But two or three times a year the stations would bless us with what some bright station official called a “movie marathon”, all-night movies chosen to fit in with a theme. Such was the novelty of it all that my friends and I would camp out in someone’s living room and actually stay up all night. Next day we wouldn’t be any use to anyone, but it was good while it lasted.

It was during one of these movie marathon nights that I happened to see Head, a film starring The Monkees and which made no sense at all. It began with the group being chased through the streets of San Francisco by a mob of people who definitely were not fans. They found themselves on the Golden Gate Bridge and, with the mob approaching from both sides, they decided there was only one option left. They jumped. The descent seemed to last forever. And it looked like such fun. Of course, it helped that when they finally hit the water – unharmed, I might add – and began sinking towards the bottom of the bay, a school of particularly lovely-looking and well-endowed mermaids appeared out of the gloom and carried them to safety. Most thirteen-year-old boys dream of flying helicopters, flying into space, or performing numerous heroic deeds designed to attract the attention of girls – at least the pretty ones – everywhere. I remember turning to Fred, one of my school friends, and, pointing at Michael Nesmith in the alluring arms of a mermaid, saying, ‘One day I’m going to do that.’

Fred, of course, didn’t seem particularly impressed. And I’m sure it was this incident among many other similar ones which led him to the conclusion, voiced a couple of years later, that I would never make anything of my life. He was good at the cutting remark. He became a lawyer.

Thoughts of jumping aside, we could see South Bank stretching away from us to our left, an oasis of green fronting the river, at its back the modern highly-developed city. A dense blooming forest bursting forth in defiance of developers everywhere. We knew it was artificial, but to the untrained eye it looked like nature making its last stand. At its front jetties poked out into the river like lazy fingers. At one a catamaran was collecting people.

The South Bank parklands are the quintessential people place. We walked past the performing arts centre, then along the promenade, the handsome modern buildings of the University of Queensland to our right. Good-looking and unobtrusive, some clever architect has designed them to fit into their surroundings. On the lawns a marquee was being set up for some public function. Next to that a makeshift stage had been constructed where a roadie stood blabbering into a microphone. ‘Can you hear me?’ he asked. ‘Is it turned on?’ I think the whole of South Bank could hear him. This is a place where people matter, they are invited to enter, the individual is important. All around trees border the lawns. It would be a good place to sit and contemplate the world as it slowly passes you by. Indeed, all along the promenade young couples newly dating and slightly older couples with young children inhabited benches set into the wall, overlooking the river. Cyclists sounded their bells before giving you a wide berth. This was a genteel place, where people, it seemed, kept a polite distance, allowed you your space, yet looked out for you. We felt safe there.

We came to a pagoda tucked away inside an area made up to look like a rainforest. Squat and square, with a wide two-tiered roof, the dark-stained wooden walls were covered in intricate carvings. It stood in stark contrast to the elevated bypass and obnoxious tower blocks inhabiting the opposite bank of the river. There were days when such workmanship was taken for granted. Sadly they are long gone, except for buildings deliberately designed to attract the tourist, sham reproductions of a former time, an attempt to capture something of the past and failing remarkably in the process. Still, you can’t help but admire the devotion to detail that went into its construction. Perhaps it will still be there long after the tower blocks and the expressway have been demolished.

A wooden walkway led us through a dense forest where the light was dimmed, the air cooler. Down below a stream gurgled merrily. Giant palms and trees, their trunks thick and ageless, dwarfed bystanders. It was hard to imagine that all around, just a few hundred metres away, a progressive city laboured and strove in its effort to move ever forward, ever upward. It must be murder to be stuck behind a desk in one of those office blocks and have to look out at these parklands all day. Strange things would happen to you. A constant view of the unattainable would be enough to do some people in.

The most impressive sight of all was yet to come. Streets Beach is a series of interconnected public swimming pools designed with amazing foresight to look like a beach. Which I guess is why its called Streets Beach. The logistics of shipping so much sand in must have been enormous. It was, literally, everywhere. The effect was spectacular. Ringed with palms and intricately designed water features where water tumbles from one receptacle to another, it almost succeeded in fooling us into thinking we were no longer in the heart of a twenty-first century urban expanse. Except, of course, for the dire looking retail buildings peeping through the palms in their attempts to lure visitors. All about us mothers and fathers lolled on the sand while their kids splashed in the water. Teenage girls and boys, oblivious to modern concerns about UV rays and their link to melanomas, lay taking in the sun. It was like any beach anywhere. People looked happy. And I suppose they were. Because right next door were more restaurants than you could possibly eat at in a week. And down the road a way was the art gallery and museum. Across the river a retail paradise. I wondered if people came here to Streets Beach, spent a couple of hours relaxing, then choofled off over Victoria Bridge to do their shopping in Queen Street Mall. They probably did. And why not?

One of the great pleasures of South Bank is sitting at a table outside a café sipping cappuccinos. My wife is a great lover of coffee and takes every opportunity to slurp one. As for me, I like the whole ambience such an endeavour creates. It’s my ambition to sit back and read a good book while people hurry by on their way to work. Something about having the entire day before me, and having something so many other people wish they had. Time to simply be. I can stretch a coffee over thirty minutes so that the last mouthful is invariably always cold. My wife, on the other hand, likes her coffee piping hot – more than once she’s sent a coffee back to the kitchen with a waiter whose instructions are to bring back an almost unbearably hot replacement. Many a waiter has suffered close to third-degree burns to their hands, forearms and face from the radiant heat of the coffee just by carrying it to our table. When she gets it my wife gulps it down under the astonished gaze of all about her. Her mouth and throat are made of cast iron. This means she’s finished long before me and tends to wander off, first asking if I mind being left alone. We check our mobile phones, the modern equivalent of synchronizing watches, and then she’s off while I settle back and stare at the view or bury myself in a book. Thinking, Hemingway would have loved South Bank. I think.

That night we ate at Amicis Pizza Bar. Nearby a lone guitarist sang songs to a crowd at another restaurant. A couple of girls sat behind him, adoring him from anear. Like many singer-songwriters he modeled himself on all who came before him and displayed a remarkable lack of originality. How hard can it be to strum a few chords and moan into a microphone? A middle-aged man wearing slacks and a polo shirt sat alone at an adjacent table staring out through the trees at the lights of the city reflected on the water. He concentrated on his food and now and then stared defiantly at people on nearby tables, as if to show them he was eating alone because he wanted to, it was his choice. There was, his manner suggested, nothing wrong with him. Which seemed to suggest there was. Maybe he’d been stood up. How long had he waited before disappointment overtook him? Before he realized his date wasn’t coming? Behind him a young couple chatted awkwardly, the boy dressed in jeans, sneakers and a black t-shirt, his hair cut in a mullet, the girl dressed to kill in a short skirt and low-cut blouse. A first date if ever I saw one. And judging by the girl’s expression the last. Any moment her mobile would ring and someone would relate the details of some tragedy for which her presence was needed immediately. Only it didn’t. Though as soon as the last course was finished they left, the boy looking pitifully bewildered, the girl immensely relieved.

Eventually the lone diner asked for his cheque and got up to leave. I watched him go, thinking I could empathize with the way his night had gone and was going. For myself, I’ve never been stood up, though there have been a few times I wished I had.

On the way back to our hotel we arrived at the foot of the stairs leading up through Edwards Park. A lone jogger had just reached the top. He stood on the summit, bent over, sweat giving a sheen to his shaved head.

‘Go on,’ Tess said. ‘You can do it.’

I looked at the stairs, then at her, then at the stairs again.

‘I dare you.’

So I headed off, taking two steps at a time, and it was surprisingly easy. Before long I was at the top looking down at her, not too breathless, just a little overwrought but trying not to appear so.

‘I told you you could do it,’ Tess said when she joined me.

I stared out over Brisbane, towards the Brisbane River, and for a short while could not speak.