book review
8 Sep 2008
The Rise of Queensland
How has backward, authoritarian Queensland managed to produce such a crop of political talent? Contrary to popular theory, it wasn't all Joh's doing
Together with the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, our new Governor General, Quentin Bryce, makes up a trifecta of Queenslanders now in the country's top jobs. As Bryce was sworn in on Friday, she was welcomed by, among others, John Hogg, Senator for Queensland and President of the Senate.
How has backward, authoritarian Queensland managed to produce such a crop of political talent? Is there something about the State that outsiders have underestimated, or simply missed?
The latest edition of Griffith Review, entitled Hidden Queensland, attempts to answer this very question. According to its editor, Julianne Schultz, some southerners are bemused by this sudden arrival of national figures from the Sunshine State.
The idea of a "hidden Queensland" is a seductive conceit. From the outside, Queensland must often seem opaque, in need of explanation. From the inside, "Queenslander" feels like an identity that is regularly misread. We Queenslanders always want to say: there is more here than meets the eye; we are more than you think.
Of course, it's impossible that something as big as Queensland could successfully hide. In my student days, the train trip from Brisbane back to Townsville for tropical Christmases took a full 24 hours - and that was only halfway up the coast. Actually, part of what makes it difficult to peg Queensland is that this vastness isn't easily summarised. There are Queenslands, and for the most part Hidden Queensland does well in pointing this out.
However, many of the essays that directly address Queensland's political landscape rehearse an increasingly familiar version of events that I think needs to be challenged: that the darkness of the Bjelke-Petersen era provided a unique breeding ground for political brilliance.
Schultz especially offers the story of a buried tradition of oppositional political activism and intellectual practice, which she argues led to the political ascendancy of Rudd and co. Her take is that while the State suffered under the "Hillbilly dictator", countercultural boomers and older gen X-ers maintained a tradition of protest and dissent that nurtured future leaders.
For Schultz, figures like Wayne Goss, Peter Beattie, Kevin Rudd, Anna Bligh and (current Melbourne Uni VC and Prime-Ministerial confidant) Glyn Davis "drew on" the social unrest brought about by the protest movement that opposed Joh. From this perspective, it's easy to view the Joh era with a kind of nostalgia. In the "Pig City" school of popular history, the period is often cherished for the excitement of an oppositional movement that encompassed culture and politics.
Chris Masters's "Moonlight Reflections" and the short pieces on "the olden days" by John Birmingham and Stuart Glover all look back on the era with something approaching fondness. Like Schultz, these authors write their histories and recollections crackingly well. But like many younger Queenslanders, I'm impatient with this narrative, and think the idea of a formative, Joh-era "radical tradition" needs to be more closely examined.
In one election campaign, a famous National Party poster wholly identified Joh with Queensland. (A parodied version of this poster is included in Hidden Queensland). I think his erstwhile enemies, too, often pay him the compliment of doing the same. There's a comfort in thinking that with Joh's passing, the battle was won, the "old Queensland" disappeared, and although a new one was born, the radical ferment of those times left their mark in shaping a more modern State.
However, this story relies on the Joh era being an "exception", or at least on the theory that we could never go back to that brand of authoritarianism. But Queensland had iron-fisted premiers on both sides of politics before Bjelke-Petersen, and both Beattie and Goss occasionally succumbed to the temptations that Queensland's relatively unchecked executive power extends to its premiers. These facts point to unresolved structural weaknesses in Queensland's polity - which Joh exploited rather than created.
Also, part of Joh's success lay in the fact that he was - under the watch of key advisers such as Allan Callaghan - probably the most modern politician Queensland had seen up to that point, especially in areas like media management. The problem was that for much of his reign, everybody else was catching up.
Self-congratulatory assessments of boomer radicalism miss the fact that the immediate effect of most protests was to bolster Joh's leadership. Indeed, his hold on the premiership was tenuous until his brutal, but electorally well-received response to the Springbok tour protests in 1971. If the protest movement was really maintaining an intellectual tradition and incubating political leaders, how did a Kingaroy primary-school graduate out-manouevre them for so long? How did they not see that every conflict in the streets strengthened his hand? Why did they take so long to formulate strategies to dislodge him?
Hidden Queensland does nothing to allay the feeling that the broad left was as weak, divided, misdirected and as disconnected from Queenslanders at large as the Labor party was for most of Joh's reign. In fact, Beattie's or Goss's or Swan's contributions lie largely in recognising that much of the broad left was heading down a cul-de-sac, and in making the only part of the opposition with a chance of success - the Labor Party - viable.
Similarly - leaving aside that fact that Rudd left Queensland early, and is hardly even of the Labor movement, let alone the protest movement - when he returned as a Goss adviser, he obstinately set about fixing a broken system by working on proper process. If we really want to understand him, we should look to this obsessive quest to restore good governance from 1989, or perhaps to his struggle to make himself safe as Member for Griffith from 1998. Intellectual? Yes. Radical? No.
Protest didn't topple Joh - that was left to a confluence of his own hubris, a rebellious National Party, mind-bending corruption scandal, and the belated stirrings of democratic institutions. We're just fortunate that some key figures did the dirty work of making sure that Labor was electable when its time came.
The lack of significant formative influence from Brisbane's radicals can be seen in what has happened since then - Labor has led a fairly traditionally pro-development Queensland Government in most of the intervening period (albeit with better processes in place). Beattie was successful because, like Joh, he crafted his messages to appeal to non-metropolitan audiences, and didn't run too far ahead of a conservative electorate. The legacy, or lesson, of the era might be about the need to pragmatically target mainstream opinion, and that political success in Queensland is about tricky negotiations with multiple constituencies, not vanguardism or confrontation. If there has been significant political change, it has involved repairing process. That may sound familiar.
Historically, much of Queensland's story has been written from Brisbane, even though an unusually large proportion of the population lives outside the capital, and many of the Queenslanders who have made a difference have come from the regions and the country. Joh and previous Labor governments prospered in part because of their engineering of the electoral system to give greater weight to country voters, and in part because Joh laser-targeted his messages at them.
My great Aunt in Bowen - generous, funny and a pillar of her community - still defends him, because Joh convinced her and thousands of other Queenslanders that he was representing them "down south", and fighting against the kind of change that the protest movement obligingly volunteered to embody. On the other hand, Joh-era Brisbane, with its failing institutions and entrenched corruption, was a problem that the rest of the State had to solve - Swan and Rudd came from Nambour, Beattie from Atherton, Goss from Mundubbera via Inala.
It's pleasing, then, to see so many pieces in Hidden Queensland devoted to the State's far-flung regions and provincial cities. There's exemplary history in Anna Haebich's look at the founding of Bowen, and Michael Wesley's account of the PM's old haunt of Nambour. There are more personal pieces on bits of Queensland that are often forgotten, misrepresented or dismissed. I very much enjoyed Adam Narnst's short essay on Mackay, which is framed as a response to Ross Gibson's Seven Versions of an Australian Badland. It's a miniature version of the collection as a whole, showing that even badlands have other stories to be told about them, and shared understandings to be voiced. Altogether, I don't believe that I've seen a better collection of pieces about regional Queensland.
There's one exception, however. Luke Slattery's "Falling to Earth" is an account of his childhood in Townsville, and this reader found it a little too self-serving and self-satisfied. He writes at one point that Townsville is impossible to romanticise, but doesn't show the same restraint with his own autobiography, treating the city as a backdrop to the development of his own, transcendent excellence. The trope of Queensland as a place to be left behind by the gifted native on the way to greatness is tired, and here, it's charmlessly employed.
Despite quibbles, Hidden Queensland does manage to nuance the reader's idea of the State. It's timely, because not only are our favourite sons and daughters taking the reins of the country, but demographic changes are making the State more prominent in the nation's life.
Hidden Queensland doesn't definitively unveil the concealed face of the Sunshine State - there isn't one to unveil, or at least not just one. But it may encourage other writers to try to register Queensland's complexity. For this reason alone, it's recommended reading.
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Jason: I wouldn’t wax lyrical about the glory of being a Queenslander if I were you. Under the revolting reign of Joh Bjelke-Petersen Queensland was the most corrupt state in the history of Australia. You wait; I venture to suggest that sink of corruption still exists. Todays eager hopefuls will, in time, revert to type.
Kevin Rudd, (although, as a Labor voter, I voted for him), epitomizes all the inherent bible-belt, religion ridden, backwoods parochialism, and culture deprived qualities which make QLD the Deep North of Australia.(the fact he has learned another language, and a very difficult one is to his credit but apparently it has failed to expand his cultural horizons)
Also: What is wonderful about what’s her face? Becoming Governor- General. What is interesting is that it took a Queenslander to represent the last vestiges of British power in Australia. The face on our currency is that of a foreigner, and QLD has produced an anachronism-not for the first time.
PS: I’m told Brisbane now has an art gallery-hey! How many years behind the main states can you get?
Thanks Venise. You have amply demonstrated the generosity, open-mindedness and contemporary insight that Queenslanders evidently lack.
Yes, I guess Queensland is a little behind. Victoria established an art gallery in 1861, NSW in about 1880 (exact date is debated), and Queensland in 1895. Doesn’t seem like a very topical point to bring up though.
Hi Andrew, you are clearly unfamiliar with Venise… ;)
There is some interesting cultural theory that suggests the most interesting and useful ideas come from the periphery, as the site of the most innovative thinking. Certainly attitudes like Venise’s support the ‘otherness’ of Queenslanders.
It is a position they take with pride, and cultivate. It is also the reason they can position NSW as the favourites in League, even though they clearly have the better team.
This is a game Australians have played with the rest of the world for years, so in one sense they are simply being ‘super Aussie’. As one of the last frontier societies we have been responsible for many triumphs of what my university lecturer used to admiringly call the ‘mongrel aethsetic’, or the ability to take established ideas and apply them differently to new situations.
If I consider Queensland as an ‘ideas frontier’ which has been cultivated while the rest of Australia modernises and globalises, I can see the strength of their position. Possibly the rest of Australia is looking at these people as action types, able to create genuine change because they are less invested in the status quo.
In that sense Joh’s insistence that it was Queensland V’s the rest of Australia may well have had an influence in maintaining this notion of seperateness. If his infuence was political, in creating clever and tough opposition, then where are all the savvy new poloticians arising from the Howard era? Nowhere, because the majority of Australians simply had it too good during that time to develop innovative means of dealing with social and other issues.
On a lighter note Venise, I had a ‘sink of corruption’ once in a share house. I imagine that is still there too, I certainly had no stomach for cleaning it.
Dr Dog, and Dear all and sundry. And dear everyone I have managed to offend. And doubtless will continue to offend in the future, BTW; Rachelc102, to my knowledge I have not encountered you at all. So which particular issue are you talking about?
Jason: I admit I was bloody rude and I apologize, for being rude that is, but I venture to suggest that Joh Bjelke-Petersen is a name which will frighten children long after we have gone. Admittedly Bob Askin of NSW and Henry Bolte of VIC were in the same mould as Joh. But not quite as corrupt.Anyway, I will cut to the chase with a couple of rebuttals-without the venom, BTW I knew QLD had an elderly art gallery, but it took for ever to bring it up to date. Also the it has taken for ever for QLDs inhabitants to come within a bulls roar of the southern states, on the Art and Culture front. Also, if you wish to impress we hicks from the south you might care to consider the following. 1) The tone of your article seemed to me to be very pleased with QLD. As if you had invented the wheel perhaps? 2) We Melbournistas don’t take too kindly to a Prime Minister who is not only a bible thumper; he is one who imposes his hick, religious beliefs onto the rest of the country. His disgraceful pillorying of Bill Henson being a case in point. Your Kevin Rudd, being-it would appear-ignorant of the Art scene rushed in to make a judgement about an image he had never seen. Certainly, he has the right to an opinion AFTER seeing the work.(and I mean seeing it in person, not just a fascimilie) And, as Prime Minister it is his job to be seen to encourage art. Not slam it blindly. 3) When a person attempts to whitewash, or so it seemed to me, a crooked politician like Bjelke-Petersen I have to wonder what else that person will defend.
Finally, as a Republican, I regard Quentin Bryce as an anachronism. I think I went on to suggest the state of QLD was an anachronism. Something I will continue to believe (although for everyone else’s refined tastes I wont be so strident in future) until the people of QLD can field public figures who don’t have the southern states squirming with embarrassment.
BTW rachelc102 I don’t mind being crucified for something I did do. But I’m buggered if I like being crucified for something of which I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about.
Dr Dog: Yeah, I’ve known a few sinks like that. I’d almost venture to suggest I was born in one. But unlike QLD and Joh Bjelke-Petersen, I took the effort to clean up my sink.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist that crack. Cheers Dr Dog. See, you’ve made me smile :) :) :)
Dear Dr Dog, I would make the point that I’m a Labor voter who, thus far, has been underwhelmed by the achievements of the Rudd government. I actually thought that after the corrupt little dwarf, John Howard, we Australians might have some hope for the future. At this stage he has done another populist deed-totally out of John Howard’s book-by promising yet more taxpayers’ money to the already bloated size of the Olympic team to contest in London in 2012.
I think the answer, Jason, is that Queensland has never been backward. It just gets portrayed that way, by people who seem to need anything other than themselves to laugh at. And what anguished his political critics about Joh, more than anything else, was that he kept getting the votes. And it wasn’t the ‘Joh gerrymander’ that did it, as Wayne Goss proved in 1989. It was the fact that Labor in Queensland spent years fighting itself. That’s the real lesson from Queensland. It’s one today’s Liberal Party should heed.
Arel:How can a state be portrayed as something if there isn’t some vestige of truth to it? In other words, if everyone else thinks of QLD as being; how shall I put this politely? Somewhat rural in its thinking? How did we all arrive at this conclusion unless there’s something tangible in that thought? Let me see if I can really get the point across. How would the world have arrived at the conclusion that the Renaissance produced great artists, unless the world had seen the sublime art, sculpture, architecture, statues, and so on, of that era?
One man destroys the idea of QLD political talent; Wayne Swann.
I’d suggest the only reason QLD has become a source of Labor political talent is because the Labor Right has corrupted or destroyed anything within its sphere in nearly every other state.
Just look at the Labor mafia bankers like Carr.. and wannabe banker Costa. The ultra corrupt mobsters in WA. The implosion of the NSW govt.
I actually went to the Rudd victory celebrations in Suncorp stadium.
It was like being an extra on a TV set.
The 3 groups in this tele-drama;
1. Suited svengalis; lots of young labor *and some turn-coat greens*, arrongant, elusive, rude, elitist…
2. MSM, zombie mainstream media; bored, statinary, not interviewing anyone, just waiting for the BIG SPEECH
3. Branded Kevin07 Punters; a little drunk, obviously under instructions not to talk to media, or make a scene
If this is Queensland political talent in operation, then we are in need of a democractic revolution.
All I see in QLD is a state being heavily subsidised by minerals. They are making most of the same mistakes as the neoliberal southern states. Those mistakes havent caught up with them yet, the weight of years of corruption and incompetence has not yet started to crush the system.
So in short, the reason QLD looks so good, is that the rest of the country and its leaders are incompetent, corrupt and decaying.
Queensland looks so great, because its new despoiled.
All of them out
I quite like Queenslanders, but I wouldn’t want one living in my street.
Venise - I really still don’t understand the point you’re trying to make. We agree that Joh was corrupt, and that Kevin Rudd is a bit conservative. But you seem to be labouring under the impression it’s all duelling banjos and revival meetings in Queensland. Have you visited lately? Ever?
Niccolo - You appear to have no time for any mainstream politician. It makes it difficult to have a productive conversation about my piece with you. I won’t go too far into your arguments here, but they are, at best, ungenerous, and they seem to rest on very selective and/or fragile premises. For example, your cartoon version of Queensland’s economy just doesn’t stack up. I’ll just say this - it makes it difficult to talk about democratic renewal, which you profess to be keen on, if you believe that no one who is actively involved in politics is ever acting in good faith.
Ben - It’s the children I feel sorry for.
Venise: does "BTW I knew QLD had an elderly art gallery, but it took for ever to bring it up to date" mean that you think the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art is just Queensland Art Gallery brought "up to date"? Surely, like all southerners, you are enlightened as you say it, on the "Art and Culture front", and you know these are two separate establishments??
Also, you said to Arel:
How can a state be portrayed as something if there isn’t some vestige of truth to it? In other words, if everyone else thinks of QLD as being; how shall I put this politely? Somewhat rural in its thinking? How did we all arrive at this conclusion unless there’s something tangible in that thought?
I would just say…if the majority of the world was of the opinion that the world was flat, it does not necessarily mean that the world is flat. Enough said I think.
rachelc102: Yes, clearly I was not familiar with Venise, but thanks for the wink.
Are you all having a ball? It is most interesting. Even though I apologized profusely you are still hopping into me. Dare I suggest I may have struck a nerve?
Now, who was first in line?
BEN POBJIE: I think I’m in love with you. Dare I hope you will continue to write many, many more of your wonderful articles?:) :) :)
JASON WILSON: Frequently. Anywhere south of the 27th parallel I find to be intolerable.:( :( :(
When I have nightmares I think of the appalling over building on the Gold Coast. Not even Melbourne could produce such hideous, unlovely, soul-less, and crass over development. Certainly our politicians try hard to subject us to it; but they actually have to face people who do give a damn about the environment, as in the case of the infamous St. Kilda triangle.The Brumby government met such a wall of protests they had to re-think the issue. Then there is the little doozy of an idea that Brumby had, of turning all our lovely inner-suburban shopping strips into freeways. They may still do it. But they are having to seriously re-think the issue, because of the volume of protest. A
lady up the street from me, who owns a shop which would be affected, collected 5,000 signatures of protest. Not bad eh? Yeah, Rio is a tad over-built (before you all start screaming rape-Yes, I know Rio well. I know Buenos Aires better, but I digress-but at least their is a height limit on the buildings. And, of course, the city is full of Brasileños.
On the other hand Jason: Anywhere north of Cairns is paradise. Pity about the people. It’s OK Jason, I’m just kidding:) :).
ANDREW EDE: What a fucking stupid comment. Flat earthers are as irrelevant to this shouting match as whipped cream is to fillet steak. Try re-reading my comment Andrew. The gist of which was. We all know what great artists were being produced during the Renaissence, because the evidence of their existence is readily available. The southern states, based on the evidence-which is also readily available-believe Queenslanders to be hicks. And I believe you lot are re-enforcing our beliefs most admirably.
RACHELC102: Unless I mis-read you. I believe I already answered your query. Therefore, I will suggest that you re-read what I said the first time.
Have you all had your fun? Terrific! "I have to say that all of you are such gracious winners (choke, choke). I apologized to Jason, did I not? So why don’t you all take a couple of pain relief tablets, AND GROW UP!
Paragrph 3, third line up from the bottom should read there, not their.
KL Bedford
Although not a Queenslander by birth I have been here since 1949 with a short time away. I do not regard myself as a Queenslander or any other state citizen I am an Australian and I deplore the stupid parochial stae attitudes. However none of you have read any history of this state. Read Raymond Evans excellent history of Queensland please and perhaps you could make sensible comments. I arrrived in Queensland when it had a Labor Government kept in power by a jerimander. Joe simply took the Labor Government’s work and expanded it and made it worse. Queensland has throughout its history had corrupt govrnments. So Joe was nothing knew except he ran into a situation where the state was no longer prepared to put up with it. A very corrageous National Party Minister standing in for Joe whilst he was on his Federal push called in another corrageous man Tony Fitzgerald and had a full Royal Commission enqiry which cleaned out the stables. They are not now as clean a they should be but they compare well with the rest of Australia. The Howard government had there own form of corruption and much of our current problems stem from this. Incidently the Queensland Art Gallery was first produced in its modern form because Liberal Treasurer used the money saved from the Lottery that financed the free hospital system after the Whitlam government introduced Medicare whih then financed them.
Keith Bedford
Brisbane
Moggill, I’m a bit uncomfortable with your spelling of Joh, I don’t want to be tarred wit hthe same brush.
Please correct me, but aren’t half of all Queenslanders ex-Victorians ? Given that I think Brisbane is the most beautiful city in Australia (with a chaotic road system), I can only conclude that as they move north, the IQ of Victoria falls rapidly, while that of Queensland rises correspondingly ?
Yeah, Brisbane’s road system: my dad used to live in Scarborough, and we were staying in the city, and I’ll swear that I unintentionally took a totally different route every time we drove out to see him in his little flat. I devised a whole new range of expletives.
Joe
Hi Joe,
It’s an interesting theory that half of Queenslanders are ex-Victorians. I asked my great aunt, Maria Paz Dolores, about this. She helped herself to half a bottle of my Gordon’s gin, threw in an egg-cupful of tonic, and thought for a moment. "No, hija, this is not so. Both Melbourne and Sydney were peopled by Tasmanians who were fleeing north to Queensland but failed to change planes." seeing the look of doubt on my face she said.
"It’s no use arguing with me Venise. She helped herself to another lashing of gin. "I came from Chile did I not?" I reached for a bottle of my socialist latté drinking Chardonnay and nodded. "So I too was a blow up from Sydney.!" I capitulated and stopped talking.
"Blow in?" she asked.
Dear Dr Dog,
For some reason known only to the intellectually impoverished, I missed your marvellous reply to my query, last month. My query was appropos of chess, the death rate of footy players, and oi, oi, oi.
Yeah, ‘shut the fuck up’ has a certain resonance. But for it to be effective, I feel that it has to be uttered in a deep throated roar. Very difficult if you’ve got a mouthful of pie, also it doesn’t have that lovely onomatapia or is it alliterative cadence of ‘Arse-hole’. What do you think?
Your: "Australians only really supports sports we know we can win." Ouch, but deadly accurate.
And the final para was great.
Cheers
Venise.
Ahhh rechelc102, it becomes clearer still. A diatribe of largely meaningless ranting with the inability to comprehend her own use of the fallacy of the argumentum ad numerum.
Vensie, let me spell out my argument that you may understand.
Your statement was that “How can a state be portrayed as something if there isn’t some vestige of truth to it? In other words, if everyone else thinks of QLD as being; how shall I put this politely? Somewhat rural in its thinking? How did we all arrive at this conclusion unless there’s something tangible in that thought?”
Well, at some point in our history “we all” arrived at the conclusion that the world was flat. Yet it was not. So just because “you all” are of the opinion that Qld is “rural in its thinking” does not mean that it is.
You then follow your assertion with evidence!!! Queenslanders must be hicks because the Renaissance produced great artists, and we have evidence to prove the Renaissance produced great artists – inane drivel. The argument that Renaissance produced great artists is as relevant to a perception that all Queenslanders are hicks as “whipped cream is to fillet steak”. Try to think before you write, that you may at least appear less foolish.
hey Jason,
thanks for the compliment in the review. It is very pleasing to be noticed.
stuart
Hi Stuart. No worries - I very much enjoyed your piece.
Thanks Venise,
I’d forgotten how well I could write before the stroke.
I would consider ‘arse-hole’ to be more suited to a chant, to be repeated at least 20 times in a sing song fashion.
But to return to assasinating the character of Queenslanders, lets remind ourselves that if our parents had been a bit stupider or more keen on skin cancer we might have been born in Queensland ourselves.
I note there are in this stream two great examples of innovative ideas arising from Queensland. Joe has devised a new set of expletives, many of which he has used in previous posts. Indeed new ways of expressing frustration must arise from the tension of waiting for a Queenslander to do anything at a normal pace.
Andrew Ede and yourself appear to be suggesting a new dish of prime tableland Waagu beef fillet topped with whipped cream. No doubt a bit of Wasabi in the cream and you have a meal fit for a tourist. Brilliant.
I have been over the back of the dividing range in Queensland and you will be shocked to hear that in that area the earth actually is flat. Often so are the beers.
I too, Venise, harbour confusing feelings about Ben Pobjie, but more because of his picture than his writing.
But to address some of your points, I don’t think the vitality of a culture can be measured by the number or even quality of its cultural institutions. Indeed they are more a measure of the resources on offer and the number of new money social climbers prepared to shell out for such monoliths. We have them in spades right here in Sydney.
I predict that as rents go up in Brisbane contemporary cultural production will suffer. This is because the people that make a city really interesting will have to go and live elsewhere. We are right in the middle of gentrifying every capital city in this country and we will be the poorer for it, unless we are landlords, in which case we will be rolling buck-naked in cash.
Naturally Kevin Rudd is a disappointment, he is the product of the ‘new Queensland’. If we are to have a Queenslander I would prefer we had voted in a foulmouthed shearer from Longreach.
Hi Doctor,
What makes you think a foulmouthed shearer from Longreach was necessarily a Queenslander ? My grandfather, before his anarchist days, was precisely that, although he was officially from Queanbeyan, but who really knows ? He grew up at Burketown, so I suppose I could have Queenslander ancestry, which is a traumatic discovery at my advanced age. Another whiskey and I’ll be okay.
Surely the reality is that Queensland is very different now from what is was in the sixties, when JoH took over on that fateful 08/08/68. Mining, tourism and the immigration of bright Victorians has transformed the place. I must defend Brisbane for its beautiful architecture, and the annual paint-jobs that every building seems to be subject to, at least in Spring Hill and Fortitude Valley. But frankly, Adelaide’s Chinatown runs rings around Brisbane’s, and probably Sydney’s too. But Brisbane’s is still worth migrating for. But perhaps not from Adelaide, the freckle of the world perhaps, but it’ll do me.
Joe
Dr Dog: I’m very sorry to hear about your stroke. Let me hasten to assure you there is nothing wrong with your writing, nothing at all. BTW: my grandmother was born on a gold-field in Charter’s Towers, the family used to follow the gold rushes, two brothers were unsuccessful gamblers and other members did the miners’ clothes washing.
Please look after yourself. There are an awful lot of parochial and provincial rurals up that part of the tablelands.
AndrewEde: Not to put too fine a point on it. I don’t give a fuck what you think of me or my writing. But I do, however, take exception to your inability to express cogently, a thought without using words like drivel and other extraneous tidbits. I am not surprised by your apparent desire to be a patronizing, parochial rural.You are merely running true to QLD form.
You make me feel good about the comment I made in the ‘list of things to do before you die: Crikey readers brace for the end of the world’ (11th Sept ‘08).
Venise Alstergren writes: I would leave a message for a future humanoid from Saturn, or beyond. "God is an anachronism. But Queensland is worse!"
Finally Andrew. Ever hear the name Pauline Hanson? As you would say ‘Nuff said!’
Once again Dr Dog, hang in there.
Ciao, Venise