life cycles
first published in QWeekend, the Courier-Mail colour magazine on 8th September, 2012
I am visiting my home town of Brisbane again, as I have done regularly since moving south on March 28th, 1983. I left after years of living with the parochial Bjelke-Petersen government where corruption was rife, support for the Arts was minimal while funding for horse-racing was staggeringly high and everything connected to young people - music, student activism, having fun - seemed to be frowned upon.
I return and read a report that the Liberal-National government is allocating a whopping $110 million to upgrade horse-racing infrastructure in the Smart State, soon after axing the Queensland Premier�s Literary Awards which cost a chaff bag $230,000. Shudder.
I didn't leave solely because of the government, of course. I followed scores of my friends to the heady inner-city of Sydney where we dressed in black, sang tunelessly in art bands and held up the bar at the Trade Union Club. That pose lasted longer than adolescence, until one day I became a father and a husband. Taking a deep breath and smelling only fear, I decided my scribbling had better start earning me a living. I chose to write about the only things I knew, my family and my Brisbane childhood, changing the names to protect the guilty.
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I love Brisbane and always will. In the movie, �Stand by me� the main character writes, �I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?�. To paraphase, I�ve never found a town as exciting as the one I knew when I was twelve...
I remember riding the train to South Brisbane and fishing under the old Victoria Bridge with my mate Jimmy, whose Dad was a stock car racer. Jimmy had curly hair, a broken nose and never wore shoes. He could spit through a gap in his front teeth with alarming accuracy. Every fishing trip he caught a catfish as I reeled in river debris and listened to the trams clattering above us. Jimmy would hold the fish in front of his bad teeth and pretend to kiss it. Sometimes he�d toss it back in, sometimes bash it over the head with a rock and leave it for the stray cats. �That�s why they�re called catfish,� Jimmy would smirk, before hoicking phlegmatically into the river.
When we returned home, we'd grab our bikes and ride to Archerfield Speedway, climb the fence and pretend to be Jimmy's dad, doing wheelies on the banked dirt corners. Jimmy rode his bike with reckless abandon, challenging me to keep up. We sat in the open grandstand and talked of where we�d ride next. Jimmy wanted to wake before dawn and cycle to the Gold Coast. I�d only been to the Coast once. It took so long to get there in Dad�s Austin, I got car sick. I thought how appropriate to heave my stomach at a place called The Spit.
We never made that trip to the Coast. Jimmy wrecked his bike by riding it down a railway embankment, again and again until the frame snapped. He wore the plaster cast to school with pride. When it came time to choose between hanging out with Jimmy at home, or riding my bike alone, on my own adventures, I chose my bike.
I�m on the bald side of middle-age now and my new best friend is a carbon-fibre road bike christened, �Jimmy.� This week we are sharing a journey, forty years long, back to the haunts of my childhood, aided by Brisbane�s ever-expanding bike path network.
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On Monday morning, I set out from my hotel in Spring Hill, along Gregory Terrace, every fifty metres a bike insignia stencilled onto the road to keep me company. I remember the boarding houses on the hill where old men named Barney, wearing shorts and stained singlets, listened to the races on a scratchy radio, clenching fourex-fists, the lights of the television station antennas on Mount Cootha twinkling.
Through Roma Street gardens and along green-painted tarmac to Kurilpa Bridge and across the river, I pass a cafe every one hundred metres. How much coffee can one city consume? Beside the river, next to art galleries of glass and grass, I weave slowly between joggers and strolling pedestrians. The soul of a city can be measured by whether it allows access to the waterways for all its citizens. A worker in fluoro clothing sits on his esky at the memorial to the old Victoria Bridge where barefoot Jimmy and I fished.
He nods at my bike and asks, �How much did that set you back?�
When I tell him, he scoffs, �That�s a year�s worth of beer.�
�How do you get to work?� I ask.
I�m sure he�ll tell me about his ute and the parking fees they slug him around here.
He grins, �Trek Madone.�
His words hang in the morning air as we both picture the top-of-the-line racing bicycle.
�What about all that beer?� I ask.
He stands and picks up his esky, �I work overtime for that.�
After Southbank, I cruise the bike path alongside the South-East Freeway at peak hour, watching a long line of cars driven by middle-aged men �scratching� their noses or texting in a traffic jam, while I burn off calories and picture the worker swapping his fluoro vest for lycra, his esky for a energy bar, his workboots for cleats. A woman cyclist smiles at me and says �Good morning.� Now that doesn�t happen in a car.
The bike path takes me all the way to Toohey Forest where Jimmy and I would scour the bushland, armed with a line of string, a billy and bacon fat wrapped in brown paper, for catching yabbies in the ponds that only we knew about. We�d build a fire and toss them live into boiling water.
A chorus of magpies and crows guide me through the bush as I follow the stencilled path to Coopers Plains, turning into Musgrave Road where once we kids built a figure-eight raceway behind the sawmill, using cast off timber to line the track. It�s been replaced by a business park of fibre-optic solutions and global accessories. A few blocks along, new townhouses of shimmering glass and steel are being erected. The glossy sign promises champagne shared with women in swimsuits for the residents of �Cargo on Musgrave.�
If my Dad was alive, he�d be immensely proud that the family home still hasn�t been repainted since his 1972 marathon effort of two undercoats followed by three finishing coats. Dad was dabbling in forest green and heritage cream before they had such cloyingly fashionable names.
My father worked his adult life in a foundry, operating the same machine. He�d cycle the ten kilometres to work, a packed lunch strapped to his carrier, his overalls cleaned and ironed by Mum. I used to picture him at the machine, goggles on, his mouth grimacing with the noise, the iron filings clinging to the hair on his forearms. I never went to his factory, but I imagined the wide doors would be open to let in whatever breeze the Brisbane summer would allow.
Today, I retrace his route.
I nod farewell to our house and cruise down Keeling Street. At the boomgate on Beenleigh Road, I take a deep breath. Here was where my dental nurse, one morning lost in thought, walked in front of a diesel locomotive. I saw the train driver soon afterwards, sitting in his cabin at the station, his eyes downcast, an unlit cigarette in his hand. Who knows what people carry deep inside, and for how long?
Further on, Jimmy�s fibro tumbledown cowers between brick-testosterone mansions. A gleaming Pajero pulls into the driveway next door and a young boy gets out to open the gate for his mother. I imagine he climbs carpeted staircases to a bedroom crammed with enough electronic gadgetry to baffle the senses. Jimmy and I climbed trees and nailed planks between branches, hunched low in the evening as the fruit bats swooped overhead. We�d listen to his mother talk to the neighbour across the back fence, stories of Jimmy�s dad and the drink. His house is painted red, like long-dried blood.
At Stable Swamp Creek, green water trickles under the road, before flowing into a drain downstream. A drain! Didn't the Council know this is where the butterfly plague swept through when I was twelve, and we all raced down to stand and marvel at the gossamer magic? And further downstream was the mulberry bush where we threw ripe fruit that stained like lipstick. Wendy Spence and I sat on a rock one evening after school, me hoping for a kiss. Wendy hoping for... someone else.
When the Brisbane River flooded in 1974, Stable Swamp Creek became a deadly torrent. I rode around the suburbs in a daze, staring in awe at such power and menace. I read the newspaper reports of deaths and lost homes and couldn't believe it was happening in my town. It stayed with me. Of all the books I've written, 'by the river', the story of a young man and what he loses in a flood, is, and always will be, my favourite.
This creek, this suburb, this town gave me stories, and an understanding of the importance of location. It�s not nostalgia. What we lose as individuals and as a society under the guise of progress is sometimes much more than we understand. When the Bjelke-Petersen government allowed the Cloudland Ballroom to be destroyed, generations of Brisbane locals lost a symbol of their youth. Buddy Holly played there in 1958, the year I was born. Imagine how the sprung dance floor would have bounced that evening? Cloudland was where I saw The Clash and for the first time understood the power of music. All turned to rubble on one bastard night in 1982. A few years earlier, also under cover of darkness, the Bellevue Hotel was torn down, its intricate wrought-iron lacework buried under dust and rubble and provincial amnesia.
Soon after these acts of vandalism, I wrote an angry poem about Brisbane. It bemoaned the loss of so much of this history, to be replaced with concrete bunker shopping centres and McMansions. But what use is poetry against progress?
Ironically, many years later, the one positive section of this poem was featured in the literary trail on Albert Street. From my holier-than-thou Sydney terrace, I agreed to its inclusion, supposing that any place recognising its writers was a city worth being involved in (are you listening, Mr Newman?). Despite my prejudice, perhaps Brisbane was changing?
And such was the case. In the early 90�s, the Qld Writers Centre was established, a symbolic and creative move for a town that has given us writers such as David Malouf, Thea Astley and Tom Shapcott. A Writers� Train was sent to the far corners of the State transporting poets to the people. Whoo hoo! My town, where �poetry could never occur� according to Dante, the character of David Malouf�s seminal novel, �Johnno�, was now leaking poetry from its pores.
Brisbane was also rediscovering its river. While the freeway still cut along the left bank of the CBD, bike lanes and pedestrian areas began to dominate and allow a connection between the river and its people. Ferries became as important and iconic in Brisbane as they were in Sydney. At Southbank, a library, art galleries, restaurants, strolling pedestrians, swimmers, sunbathers and the highest form of intelligent life, the cyclist, have unfettered access to the river. A place of community not cars.
At Yeerongpilly, I stop outside my Dad�s foundry. It�s now a row of showrooms and offices. I picture him walking through the double doors, waving to workmates and jumping on his bike. He�d like the cycle paths beside the creeks. It would give him time to daydream, time to plan his next colour scheme. He�d know his youngest son would be waiting at the front gate to watch him cruise down Keeling Street with his hands nonchalantly behind his back. He�d lean his body into the driveway and ride the bike beside the house, never once touching the handlebars, while my Mum boiled the kettle on the woodstove. We�d sit in the back yard, Mum drinking tea, Dad and me eating slices of watermelon and spitting pips over the back fence.
On the way back to my hotel, I detour along Norman Creek, the water mud-slow, honeysuckle vine choking the banks. Like every creek of my childhood, its destination is the river. I visit a friend, Simon Sirotti, manager of Bicycle Riders shop at Morningside. He says, �I leave home from Jindalee at 7am. If I take the car, I arrive at 7:50. If I ride, I get here at 7:55. Most of the journey is on bike paths.� He smiles, �Car or bike, what do you think I choose?�
Over the next week, I hill climb Mount Glorious, Mount Cootha, Mount Gravatt and the Gateway Bridge. On a crisp winter�s afternoon, I enjoy a two-wheel excursion to Wynnum, �a poor man�s Mediterranean,� I joke to my wife over fish and chips. Her car journey here was quicker, but battling trucks through Murarrie didn�t remind her of the Spanish coastline. I cycle the foreshore and try to name each of the islands in the Bay. Surely the Council could float a cycle path across the water?
I ride along endless pathways beside Brisbane�s creeks, the rich aroma of mud and mangroves; across bridges designed exclusively for bikes and boots and through tunnels under busy roads. I watch old men tending back yard vegetable gardens; see Broncos jerseys dancing on clotheslines; talk with dogs jumping against the wire fence; and fall in love with my hometown all over again. I never understood the whole BrisVegas thing. Inspired by bike-friendly Copenhagen, may I humbly suggest BrisHagen? Or BrisVelo? Perhaps not. But as we all grow overweight, eating mega-meals, hiding behind brick-veneer with four-wheel drives lurking in double garages, perhaps BrisVelo can show the way forward to a more sustainable future where we lose weight while commuting, without destroying the planet, and maintain a sense of community in the process?
Finally, on a cloudless Saturday, armed with maps from Bicycle Queensland and the delicate fabric of memory, I cycle all the way to the Gold Coast, barefoot Jimmy�s Shangri-la. At the bridge across the Albert River, I watch the gentle slap of wind ripple the surface of the water and wonder what Jimmy would say about this latest adventure.
I hear his voice, �We�ll fish from the breakwater for mullet or whiting. Good enough for eating...� he winks, �... or feeding to the cats.�
baguettes and bicycles is a travel adventure, a restaurant safari and a guidebook for those who enjoy slow food, easy cycling... and fast descents!
To purchase this book for $2.99, go to my Amazon page, here.
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