One afternoon, a long, long, time ago, two young men were making their way back to their residential college at the University of Queensland after attending the sort of bacchanalian soiree that made university worth going to. As they stumbled through the Great Court, they saw a paver had been pulled up. They stopped to look and saw the hole led to a tunnel, so they climbed down to explore. The tunnel ran along under the Great Court walkway and, as they followed it, they found some arcane objects.
So they souvenired a couple of those objects and brought them back to college as proof of their adventure. To their fellow collegians they proudly showed off their haul: a “cathode-ray oscilloscope” and a “mass spectrometer”. I don’t know what these are and I’m not sure they did either. They looked like old TVs with really small screens.
When they woke next morning to the cold light of day, they realised what they had done. Unwilling to either own-up or try to restore the objects to their subterranean home, they did the next best honourable thing: they set fire to the cathode-ray oscilloscope and the mass spectrometer and sent them off down the Brisbane River.
Had those objects not met with a fiery ending, they may instead have ended up in what is quite possibly the most boring museum on Earth: the Physics Museum at UQ. The Physics museum is so boring no one can even be bothered opening it and turning the lights on; you have to do it yourself. It is one glass-walled room in the Physics department, full of glass cabinets containing what look like ancient torture implements, all bakelite knobs with dials and wires.
Potentiometer Perhaps a “potentiometer” was something they wired up to new students to assess their, you know, potential? I was just disappointed there was no alethiometer.
van der Graf accelerator. This would have made a great addition to the fiery farewell on the river!
The Concave Mirror This is the type of crazy fun you can have at the Physics museum.
But the star of not just the Physics museum but the whole Physics department is the great Pitch Drop Experiment. This is, hands down, the most boring experiment in the world. Until it isn’t. When this thing actually does something it makes the news. It is literally more boring than watching paint dry, because at least that only takes a few hours and you can get excited about the subtly-changing hue.
The Pitch Drop Experiment was set up in 1927 to show how even though pitch might look like a solid, it is in fact a liquid. In the last 95 years, it has dropped nine times and, until cameras were trained on it 24/7, no one actually witnessed it drop, not even its creator Professor Thomas Parnell (after whom the building is named). Now you can log on any time from anywhere and watch the pitch thinking about dropping.
When I mentioned to my SO that I was going nature bathing at Mt. Cooth-tha Botanic Gardens, his first question was, would I be getting naked. The answer was no, and although our guide, Mon, was very encouraging and accepting of whatever responses people had as a result of their experience and of how they chose to share them, I’m inclined to assume getting naked may have been met with a calm invitation to reconsider.
Nature, or Forest bathing, was invented, like vending machines full of strange things, in Japan, and is called “Shinrinyoku”. It involves going for a walk in a forest, sitting in a forest, or basically just hanging out in a forest. It has been proven (by scientists) to have actual health benefits, due to things emitted by the trees called “phytoncides (wood essential oils), which are antimicrobial volatile organic compounds derived from trees”.
Probably shouldn’t eat
Monique Ross, (or Mon as she likes to be known) who runs Heartwood Nature Bathing in Brisbane (and the surrounding area), is a certified Nature and Forest Therapy guide. Now I can picture the cynics among you hearing wind-chimes and smelling incense, but this is an actual, proper six-month course. It may seem like anyone could put a post on Facebook, strap on some sensible shoes, and take a gaggle of unsuspecting people with time on their hands to go wandering about in the woods, but stuff can happen. And did!
When people take the time to stop and smell the eucalypts, all those things that have been distracting their minds are silenced, and the foetid, rancid baggage they have been lugging around for probably decades, can start to rise to the surface like an inadequately weighted-down dead body. If they are not with someone trained to deal sensitively when this happens things could get awkward. Or someone could just trip over and break their arm, in which case Mon is trained to respond to this as well. And, of course, it’s Australia, so snakes. One participant calmed down so much that she felt herself in danger of fainting as her blood pressure dropped, so nature bathing is not without its risks.
Lurking Spider
The actual experience involves walking for a while then stopping for a short informal meditation; informal in the sense that you are just invited to notice things: sounds, smells, the feeling of the earth underneath you etc. not search for enlightenment. Unfortunately, just as we stopped to do this, helicopters, planes, and chainsaws started up. Mon told us later this happens every time and she’s learned to just laugh and accept it. We were then invited to share anything that came to us. Or not.
Now, I am not a great fan of these sharing circles because the inherent danger is there will be that one person who will overshare. Fortunately, this didn’t happen, but if it did I’m assuming Mon would have drawn on her training from the “How to Deal with Oversharing” module in her course. (For the record, my one thought was of the bush turkeys I “noticed” lurking about, reminding me of their relatives who, while we were away for two weeks, ransacked our back deck, smashed everything breakable and strewed it everywhere. Luckily (for them) Alectura lathami are a protected species and while I have a slingshot sitting on my windowsill I would, of course, never use it.)
And so we walked, then stopped, then shared and so on. It was a very pleasant and restorative way to spend two hours. At the end, while we each found a place to just sit awhile, Mon laid out a lovely morning tea. The tea itself she brewed from herbs and flowers in her garden. As Mon poured the tea and handed the cups over, each person was invited to share again, then we just sat around and had a chat. Which is when, our collective guards down, danger struck. As I was drinking my tea and nibbling on an apricot-coconut ball, a female Butcherbird swooped down, snatched the remaining ball from my hand, flew up onto a branch above, and proceeded to warble out her triumph to all the other birds, who then arrived in numbers on hearing there was free food.
One sage piece of advice my mother handed down to me from her forebears was “Don’t take your baby to the Ekka“. As far as I can remember I never did take a baby to the Ekka; I certainly took small children there but probably left the baby somewhere else because it’s no fun taking babies anywhere.
The Ekka is held every year (when there isn’t a pandemic) in August. For those not from Queensland, the Ekka is short for Exhibition which is short for Royal Queensland Show. In New South Wales they have the Royal Easter Show and as far as I can recall it was never shortened to anything, which must mean Queenslanders are lazier than New South Welshpersons, except for the footballers who keep winning the State of Origin, but that doesn’t count because football is boring.
When I was a child, such shows were all about the rides and the fairy floss, because that was the only place that magical foodstuff could be found back then. Now that I’m a grownup I hate rides and would go into a diabetic coma if I ate fairy floss so instead I visit the cakes, craft, and chickens. There’s something comforting about the fact that people still do things like tatting, felting, and just making stuff for fun.
This year they had a Platinum Jubilee theme so there were cakes paying tribute to Her Maj. The winner was a cake with HM sitting on a park bench with Paddington Bear, but I preferred the one of her hat and bag. (What does she keep in that bag?)
The chickens were fascinating as ever because there are always a lot of chickens that look totally different to the usual chooks you see in picture books, but it’s always a little bit depressing to see them in individual cages. Some of the girls, lacking a nesting box, had resorted to laying an egg straight on the bottom of the cage; it’d be like being locked up without access to a toilet. A few were having a sleep, it being that time of day, when I was there; either that or they were just depressed.
Chickens are not usually solitary creatures although I did have one lone free ranger called Esme who was a regular Houdini at escaping and did so literally until her dying day. Chickens like to wander about together with the rooster keeping them in order (when he’s not forcing himself upon them. That’s the payoff for his protection I guess).
Out on the main arena, people were doing dangerous things with motorbikes, but I didn’t stop to watch because I would never be able to unsee if it went horribly wrong and I had to watch a thousand people filming someone’s firey demise.
The Ekka is a glorious anachronism in this age of limitless entertainment on demand. It’s just a little bit weird that so many people are still willing to spend money going to see fruit and veg and farm animals, go on rides, and shoot things to win stuffed animals. I think one of my favourite things at the Ekka is the Country Women’s Association tea room. It’s entirely unglamourous but you can sit down and have a sandwich and a scone made and served by someone who looks like your gran. What’s not to love?
A lot of people in Brisbane like to moan about the public transport. I’m not heavily reliant on it so I’m not impacted by its shortcomings although I know they exist. I also don’t have a disability that makes it harder to negotiate public transport, whereas I know there are significant challenges for those who do. Brendan Donahue, a blind man who lives in West End and is reliant on catching public transport, says something as simple as announcing the stops would help him. They do it on the trains but not the bus. Just say “Stop 43”; not that hard.
But the fact is I love taking the bus. I like an excuse to take a bus rather than drive. Usually it’s just into the city where there’s sod all parking anyway so it’s easier in that respect, but recently I had a meeting in the city and then went to a friend’s for lunch at Toowong so I was able to get the bus there. And it was lovely because the bus went along Coronation Drive, a main thoroughfare that follows the river. If you’re driving you can’t look out the window, but if you’re on the bus you can. And that’s what I love; it’s like going for a fun ride. You get on and just sit there. You don’t need to worry about the traffic, and you don’t need to watch where you’re going.
And then there are the other people who catch the bus. This is probably one of the things that a lot of people don’t like about catching the bus, because after all, “hell is other people” (thank you Jean Paul Sartre, you Absinthe-swilling weirdo). But again, I enjoy the interesting folk who hop on the bus. The other day there was a woman sitting with her invisible (to us) friend having a very animated and sometimes heated discussion. Sure she made the people around her jump when she slapped the back of the seat in front and jumped in her own seat, yelling loudly in some foreign language, but for all we know her friend may have deserved to be yelled at, and she may have been making a very valid point that they just refused to accept. Hey, we’ve all been there.
About a hundred years ago when I was working in London, I used to catch the bus from Victoria Station to Edgware Rd and back four days a week. The bus went along behind Buckingham Palace and I always sat on the top deck on the Palace side so I could look over the fence, hoping to catch a glimpse of Her Maj doing a spot of pruning. There is a tennis court in the back corner and one morning I was very excited to see four people playing, but since they looked young and spry I don’t think any of them was her. I never tired of that bus trip; I swear everyday I thought, “Wow I’m in London. There’s Buckingham Palace. There’s the Albert Hall”. (To be fair the rest of the day I was looking after a demented old woman who used to swear at me and pull my hair, so I had to find some bright spots.)
Brisbane’s public transport operator, Translink, has a very cool thing on their website (or app) called Journey Planner. You enter where you want to travel to, when you want to depart or arrive, press a button and it politely says “Please wait while we plan your journey” and then several options magically appear. Sometimes the last option says you could just walk there, you lazy pig. (It doesn’t actually say that last bit.)
The Brisbane Lord Mayor, Adrian Schrinner, popped a little note in my letter box recently to let me know about the new bendy electric “turn-up-and-go” buses coming in 2023. The promo video says they are the first of their kind in Australia (take that everyone else), and will be “whisper quiet”. And these ones do have next-stop announcements. They’ll go EVERY 3 MINUTES! They’ll fit 150 people! What a time to be alive! And to be catching the bus.
In his book “Brisbane“, Ukrainian author Eugene Vodolazkin, depicts our fair city as a utopia where it’s always summer but (hopefully) never war. Clearly he has never experienced the dark depths of a Brisbane winter.
Just because it rarely goes below 20°C during the day and never below zero at night and there are usually clear, blue skies, doesn’t mean we don’t suffer. The main problem is that most of us Brisbaneites live in houses made of tin and timber, elevated to let cold air flow underneath. They are built like this to withstand the energy-sapping heat that comes when summer really arrives with Santa on Christmas Day. But this means that in winter, you may as well be living in a cardboard box. Sure it doesn’t snow (actually it did a bit back in 1984) but when those bitter westerly winds blow all the country folk in for the Ekka in August, you’d better have a singlet on.
Fearing I was in danger of developing frostbite while sitting at my desk, I recently decided to walk, shivering, up to the park on the hill and indulge in some aprication, the practice of basking in the sun. I removed my shoes and socks, rolled up my pants and soaked up some vitamin D. But before long a breeze whipped up and some clouds began to blot out the sun, the temperature dropped to, I don’t know, 18°?, and a man arrived and started singing loudly and tunelessly down by the communal compost bins. So I retreated to the inadequate shelter of my Queenslander and huddled under my electric rug (about $30 from Aldi. Best thing I’ve ever bought).
If you visit Brisbane in its cruelest month of July better pack a skivvy and a cardigan and be sure to include some socks.
Last weekend I attended the Mind Body Spirit festival, held in Brisbane over “three magical days of self-love, wellbeing, health, and spirituality”, those three days listed in the program as Fri-yay, Saturday, and Sunday.
Superlatives abounded: the stage was “magnificent”, the organisers were “thrilled”, everyone was “beautiful” and lots of things were “incredible”, which I thought was pretty accurate.
I browsed the crystal stalls, all fifteen of them, but stopped to buy a bottle of kombucha. “Aren’t you the guys I see at the markets on a Saturday morning?” I asked the stall-holder. “Yep,” he replied. “Gonna be a long day.” Then he asked the next customer, “Found yourself yet?”
As I continued browsing I overheard a lady explaining to her friend as they stood outside a stall looking at the posters promising a path to enlightenment, “You see Karen, it increases your vibrational frequency which helps you tune into your higher self and open your third-eye chakra.”
As I passed one of the Christian stalls a man asked me if I would like a blessing. “Sure,” I replied, and he held out a cap in which were small pieces of folded paper. As I walked away I unfolded my blessing to reveal a quote from 2 Timothy 1: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” I wondered if this were code for “Get out of here. Now!”
My husband N and I had gone in different directions but would occasionally meet up and report our findings.
“I was going to go to the session on ‘How to overcome thoughts that may be holding you back’ but my thoughts held me back,” N told me.
“I want to get myself a reading,” I said, “but I’m not sure which one to choose.” A lot of the booths had sign-on lists that were heavily booked, but I knew I’d lose the will to live if I had to wait too long, which could be a session for next year’s festival.
“There are heaps of them over there,” said N, pointing to an area that was partitioned off to form the “Psychic Reading Room”.
There must have been a hundred tables, each with its own psychic medium. How would I choose which one? I thought, then saw a sign that said: Which psychic medium should you choose? Mind already read.
“There’s a Japanese man in a stall over there doing palm readings,” I said to N. “He looks legit, and he doesn’t have a clipboard full of bookings so I’m going to see him.” There were lots of magazine articles from before 2007 pinned up around the otherwise empty booth, by way of testimonials.
He was sitting at a table with a young man and alternated between holding an enormous magnifying glass to the man’s hands then telling him his findings. I hung around reading the testimonials–“I’m a Christian so I don’t normally believe in this stuff but this man told me a whole lot of things that were really accurate and came true”–and waited for him to finish.
“How much does it cost for a reading?” I asked.
“I can do quick ten minute one for $60 or you can make booking for one hour that costs $220 and see me at my hotel, because you know I live in Singapore so you lucky to catch me here. In longer one I tell you everything except when you die. Cash only.”
I said ten minutes would do and I didn’t want to know about my death anyway.
After asking my age about three times–something I thought would be pretty obvious to anyone looking at my hands, let alone an actual palm-reader–he told me I was good with words. (I’ll leave that up to you, dear reader). He told me I would become a VIP when I was 62, but might have some trouble with the law when I was 70. So presumably I’m going to become a bad-ass geriatric after the fame from being a VIP goes to my head. He said I should be careful getting out of bed, to wait thirty seconds before standing up because I was prone to falls. I thought this sounded like generic psychic waffle, something you say to fill the time because you’re short on material, like, “When you get old you should be careful in the shower”. Then he added his get-out clause: “But you won’t listen to me because you’re stubborn”.
While this may or may not be true, it sounded like the kind of thing you could add to any advice to feel vindicated when the person doesn’t take it.
“You should always say no to drugs kids, but you won’t listen to me because you’re stubborn,” you say, so you can add, “See?” when you’re called to the hospital.
He told me I was in a good-luck phase and that money was never a problem for me, which is a matter of opinion surely? As for children he said I either had no children, or if I did they would have nothing to do with me in the future so I would need to prepare to look after myself. Since I do in fact have three, I made a mental note to change my will ASAP.
Only after the event did I discover I had missed the “gratitude space”, but that was okay, because I gave thanks at a nearby cafe by consuming two mimosas after which I knew for sure I had attained enlightenment.
The main thing I learned from my tour of Brisbane City Hall is that if things hang around for a long time two things can happen: they start to stink, or they are framed and preserved in perpetuity. Or both.
Before the tour started, I took myself to The Shingle Inn for a cup of tea. The original Shingle Inn opened in 1936 in Edward St, and ran continuously until it was pulled out for the building of Queens Plaza shopping centre. It is a great example of the complete disregard Brisbane City Council has always had for its heritage. Objections were voiced about the demolition of The Shingle Inn, but the developers assured everyone that once construction was complete, they would put it back. But guess what happened? They didn’t.
Fortunately, the fittings were not destroyed, but stored in a warehouse, so during the renovation of City Hall, The Shingle Inn was partly reconstructed within the building. It does look the same, albeit smaller. The rotating cake display still sits in the centre but they no longer pass the freshly-made cakes up through a hole in the floor, and they don’t turn the sugar bowls forty-five degrees after they take your order like they used to, which is why a second person turned up to take mine. Fortunately they did bin the uniforms (complete with mop hat in an awful floral design). They still make an excellent cup of tea.
The tour began with an acknowledgement of country, paying respects to the Turrbal and Jagera people, the original owners of the land. We subsequently learned that City Hall stands on what was once a waterhole where these people used to meet to fish and swim. There was a drought on when the site for City Hall was chosen in 1914, which is why they thought it would be a good spot. An acknowledgment of the original inhabitants on top of where those people used to meet freely before being shunted out of the way (specifically across the river to the other side of the purposely-named Boundary Street) sat pretty uncomfortably.
We were then taken outside to view the stone carving that sits above the entrance. Known as the “tympanum”, it was carved by sculptor Daphne Mayo and is meant to depict the settlement of Queensland. So presumably someone wearing a toga held up their hands and lo! men clad in breeches and three-corner hats, and other naked men, brought horses, cows, guns and exotic plants and quite literally drove the original inhabitants onto the ground before them. To the left of the edifice, two Aboriginal men are seen lying on the ground, one under a shield, the other still clutching his shield and spear. A kangaroo and a koala are squished into the remaining space in the corner, looking distinctly uncomfortable. It’s really a pretty distressing scene. Our guide acknowledged that this was now seen as a regrettable depiction.
The whole of City Hall had to be closed down in 2010 when it was discovered that the foundations were disintegrating. Restoration ended up costing more than it would have to build a whole new building. I can’t help wondering if this wasn’t karma or just payback for the sheer folly of building on top of what was once a water course. Concrete cancer was diagnosed in the foundations, caused by the use of water from the Brisbane River to make the concrete; the water is salty and therefore apparently makes the concrete weaker.
(It’s probably lucky that this disintegration wasn’t discovered during the Joe Bjelke-Petersen era or city workers would have walked past an intact city hall on their way home, and returned in the morning to a pile of rubble and the sound of the Deen Brothers‘ truck rumbling away.)
When the floor of the main auditorium was dug up, they found the remains of the street that originally ran along there. The stones and the drain were lifted and now sit in one of the courtyards that serve as light-wells (and, before air-conditioning, to aid in cooling). You can walk on the stones, which still have the markings from horse’s hooves, but the drain is roped off. See? Hang around long enough…
Down in the basement, we were shown one of the supporting pillars where concrete cancer had eaten it away, preserved behind glass. Down a corridor and around a corner and there was a wall covered in graffiti. The old Red Cross centre leads on to this corridor and during the war it was where the servicemen collected their supplies. These supplies included pencils and they used to test them out by drawing on the wall. Presumably this wasn’t welcomed at the time, any more than someone taking out a pen or a can of spray paint and signing their name on one of the City Hall walls now, but because it’s now almost 80 years old and happened during war time, this section of wall sits behind glass.
At the top of the building a door has been mounted on the wall. It came from the Scottish house of Sir Thomas Brisbane, Governor of New South Wales, after whom the city was named, despite him never having set foot here. It was he who commanded the explorer John Oxley to set off up the river to find fresh water and the best place to establish a more punitive penal colony for those incorrigible convicts for whom Sydney was not punishing enough. Sir Thomas’s house was originally built in 1636, but was destroyed in operations during the second world war. The door survived, so in 1958 they offered it to the city named after its former owner.
Of course, no visit to City Hall is complete without a jaunt up the clock tower. Back in the old days, anyone could go up there any time, and as a kid, I was accidentally taken up there right on midday. We were admiring the view when the bells began their deafening tolling. Now, one must book a time and the tours are done between the quarter hours to avoid hearing loss. The lift is the original, a cage operated by a lever. The four clock faces are connected to a grandmother clock that sits against one wall and has been telling Brisbanites the time since the tower was built. Until 1967 it was the tallest structure in the city; now, apart from the view to the north-west where you can see across Roma Street Parklands to the hills around Samford, all you can see are other buildings.
There was originally supposed to be an “Angel of Peace” statue on the very top of the tower, but after construction was completed in 1930 there was only about five pounds left in the budget. So what sits on top instead is all that could be built for five quid: a globe cobbled together by a plumber with scraps of copper from an old toilet cistern and bits of an old bed frame.
Brisbane City Hall remains a focal point for Brisbane, used for concerts, ceremonies, memorials and others events. The new dome in the auditorium is a beautiful addition; it can be lit up with different and sometimes changing colours to match the theme of the event, as can the building itself. And the addition of a commercial kitchen in the basement means events can be catered for in-house, rather than being brought in from restaurants, as used to be the case.
(And of course there’s the enormous pipe organ, the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, but there is so much to say about it that it will need its own post.)
Despite its regrettable depictions of oppression and unfortunate choice of site, Brisbane City Hall is still a valued and valuable part of Brisbane’s history.
I live in the inner city, however, my house backs onto a gully that leads down to the Brisbane River and that gully is a jungle. My back yard has a large Moreton Bay Fig Tree in it and there’s another enormous one across the road; in fact, that tree is a “Tree of Significance”. So there are plenty of places for wild things to be. The tree in my back yard means every evening, just on dark, possums gallop across the roof and launch themselves into the tree. And if the possums aren’t in it, the flying foxes are, or, during the day, when the tree is fruiting, Fig birds. In the Spring, Channel-Billed and Koel cuckoos fly in from Indonesia and lay their eggs in the nests of unsuspecting magpies and crows who have built them in the fig trees. These invaders out-compete the resident chicks for food and the poor parents are left trying to raise a chick that quickly grows to twice their size.
Blue-tongue lizard (Photo by J Surianto on Pexels.com)
A blue-tongue lizard has been living under the concrete at the front of the house since I’ve lived here and I occasionally see it basking in the morning sun. Sometimes I throw it a bit of fruit. And then there are, of course, the bush turkeys, that wreak absolute havoc everywhere. When we arrived home after two weeks in Bali, our back deck was trashed! Pots were broken, a tub of fertiliser lay empty on its side, contents strewn everywhere. In short, anything that could be destroyed by a turkey was.
So I am surrounded at all times and on all sides by creatures. Which is fine if they stay in their place. However, over the past year I have risen from my desk, been quietly sitting on my couch or, in the latest episode, just arrived home with the shopping, when I let out a ridiculous girlie scream, like something out of a ’60s TV show when housewives stood on chairs to get away from mice, at the sight of an animal in my house.
In order of appearance were:
A possum: entered the kitchen one evening while we were watching telly, climbed up onto the bench then the window sill and we all stood around staring at it until it made another leap and left.
Bush turkey: Came moseying in the back door, quickly skedaddled when it saw me (on more than one occasion).
Blue-tongue lizard: was lying in the doorway of my office on its way to eat the dog’s food (dog has now gone to heaven), carried on, ate some dog food then left.
Cane toad: again, sitting in the doorway of my office. (Nothing more vile than the feeling of that leathery skin on a bare foot.) Sprang away and disappeared behind the TV cabinet. Presumably it eventually made its way outside.
Baby bush turkey: (freshly hatched, these things are orphans from birth so what can you expect). Wandered up the hall and when it saw me did an about-face, then hung a right into my bedroom where it promptly hopped up onto my pillow. I cornered it, grabbed it, and as it fought and squeaked I carried it outside and let it go.
And last but by no means least, and at the absolute limit of my tolerance for these incursions: A GIANT BEARDED WATER DRAGON.
Perhaps the most alarming thing was that I think it was already in my bedroom when went out. When I sat down to put my shoes on before going out, there was a great clattering that seemed to come from behind me. I looked but, seeing nothing, assumed it was a cursed turkey on the front verandah come to dig out a few more pot plants. I crept out to scare it off but there was nothing there. I walked back into my room and carefully peered around the side of my bed but saw nothing. And so I went on my merry way, locking the door behind me.
On arriving home, I carried the shopping up the hall, (failed to spot the strange poo on the floor) put it on the kitchen bench, took the meat out and turned to take it to the fridge when I was saw the thing perched atop my couch.
Now, when I lived on acreage, literally surrounded by bush, I removed snakes (harmless carpet pythons) from mine and neighbours verandahs and, on one occasion, from our office, after a tiny brown tree snake crept into the printer hoping to live there for the winter. No problem. But this thing, that was now propped on my lounge room window- sill like someone waiting to be served at a bar, was my limit. Reptiles are pure muscle and this one was too big and spikey and had too many moving parts for me to be stupid enough to go near it. Snakes don’t have limbs or claws, they just squirm and try to wrap themselves around your arm provided you have a hold of their head.
What to do? I called a reptile remover who said he couldn’t get to me for an hour and a half so suggested I give it a nudge with a broom, assuring me it would likely keep to the wall and could therefore be encouraged out. I considered this, but reasoned it may launch itself in my direction or, worse, end up somewhere else in the house where I couldn’t see it. I ran outside to see if there were any neighbours around who could help and almost trod on the blue-tongue! AHHHHHH!!
I texted my neighbour Gary, and asked if he’d be home any time soon. He called me to say no, but offered me his schnauzer Archie, conceding that Archie would probably kill it. “No thanks Gary,” I replied, picturing the lizard jumping from surface to surface smashing everything in its path, and the dog barking and snapping at it and possibly catching it, at which point I would then have a dead or injured dragon to deal with.
Then I heard the family from next door arrive home. “Do you think you could help me?” I asked like some damsel in distress. “I have a giant water dragon on my couch.”
“Blue-tongue?” he asked.
“No. The blue-tongue is there,” I replied, pointing to where it was lying just inside my gate. “This thing is big and spikey.”
Jimmy, the man of the house, put down what he was carrying and assumed a business-like demeanour. He followed me as I opened the gate, waited for the blue-tongue to slither off behind the bins, then crept up the hall.
“There,” I pointed.
“Oh, no problem,” he said. “I’ll need gloves.”
I fetched my leather gardening gloves and gave them to him. I stood well back as he crept up behind the creature and suddenly grabbed it. It squirmed and thrashed, showing a red underbelly and making an angry squeak.
“Where do you want it?” asked Jimmy, as he wrestled the beast.
“The back yard,” I replied and led him out onto the back deck and down the stairs. But before he could reach the bottom, the fiend turned and bit him (on his gloved hand) so he dropped it, it jumped off the landing, and disappeared into the bush. The kookaburras then started up in a cacophony of warning so I figured they had spotted it.
“You keep leaving your front door open,” was Jimmy’s parting observation.
A couple of weeks ago I found myself transported from Beautiful Brisbane to a Balinese RSL. How did this happen?
There is only so much nasi goreng one can eat before one begins to crave the bland cuisine of the mother country (Australia via Ireland). I had been in Bali for a week and a half and was searching on Trip Advisor for somewhere to have dinner that served meat and three veg, when I discovered a restaurant that appeared to fit the bill. It describes itself as an Irish/Balinese restaurant serving nasi goring but also Steak and Guinness Pies, cabbage, and potato; in short the food of my ancestors the love of which still runs in my veins(sometimes). Said restaurant also promised Irish music. I though it would be great craic! So we directed our “taksi” driver to get us there post haste, “terimah kasih”.
And somewhere during that painfully slow drive must have been when a quantum leap occurred and we wound up in an alternative universe.
The music was Irish in as much as the three Balinese men were playing Van Morrison; so, to be clear, Van Morrison songs sung with a Balinese accent: Brown-Eyed Girl. (I’ll let you imagine that for a minute.) But this was followed by an Elvis number. I’ve checked, and one can draw a spider-web thin line from Ireland to Tennessee. So the Irish music consisted of Van Morrison alternating with Elvis.
As for the food, something possessed me to order rissoles, lured by the magic promise of a “special traditional recipe”. My Significant Other ordered sausages. Both dishes arrived with two ice-cream scoops of mashed potato and unrecognisable vegetable matter that turned out to be cabbage. And on the side? A little jug of Gravox. It made me a tiny bit nostalgic for boarding school.
“When will they draw the meat raffle?” My SO asked.
The waiters were “getting into it”, whooping and attempting to sing along. The old guy with the walking stick was definitely enjoying it; not so much his young female companion who obligingly sipped her dark liquid drink, and strenuously resisted the urge to look at her phone, but still eyed it longingly, clacking her acrylic nails on the table. She managed a wan smile whenever he looked at her encouragingly.
The rest of the crowd looked as though they had been teleported from Twin Towns on the Gold Coast without realising.
“Are you going to get up and do some Irish dancing?” Asked my SO. But truly, the only thing missing was a troop of girls in full Balinese costume sidling in in front of the Paddy Fields Fish Band—for ‘twas what they were called—but instead of fingers curling alluringly and wide eyes moving side to side, jigging up and down, legs whipping around like elastic bands, arms pinned to their sides.
We ate our food, politely declined the offer of dessert, and quietly left, but as we sauntered through the balmy evening and I resisted the urge to swear at every “taksi” that beeped hopefully at us, we happened upon a Massimo’s ice cream shop, the very same that we thought only existed in Noosa Heads, except this one was about four times the size and sold some weird flavours: charcoal yoghurt anyone?
And then I woke up in our lovely four-poster bed, opened the timber shutters, and stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the resort pool. Perhaps it was only a dream.
Then the building began to rattle and continued to rattle for about thirty seconds. When it finally stopped, everyone emerged onto their balconies and stared at each other. Shortly after a sheet of paper appeared under our door.
She once flew directly over my house in Brisbane. Really. In 2002 I was watching the news, they said The Queen’s plane would shortly touch down in Brisbane, we were directly under a flight path, so I ran out into the back yard, looked up, and there, directly above, was a British Airways plane. I know. Incredible.
I met Princess Anne when I was about four years old. The Royals had humbled themselves to go for a walk down the main street of Coffs Harbour as part of their tour of Australia in 1970. She stopped to ask my sister how she had broken her arm. So touching. HRH wore one of those white, broad-brimmed hats with a ribbon that were fashionable in the ’70s, and my sisters immediately procured one for themselves.
Princess Anne (with The Queen far right) in Coffs Harbour, 1970
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see The Queen during that visit, for some reason I forget, but which was always conveyed in the most disgruntled tones. I mean, who turns out to see Princess Anne?
After The Queen flew directly over my house, I became determined to see her IN THE FLESH! So I dragged my disinterested Significant Other and children, the youngest in a pram, through the crowds at Roma Street Parklands and managed to get to the roadside just in time to see her DRIVE RIGHT PAST ME! And she looked very happy! One would imagine such visits would have become rather tedious after fifty years, but HM genuinely looked like she was very pleased that so many people had risked sunstroke to catch a glimpse of her.
So I’m very pleased to say that I did manage to see Her Majesty once and I am quite sad that she’s gone. She’s been the one absolute constant in my life. RIP.
Beautiful Brisbane 