Inaccessible histories: Searching for Brisbane’s structure of feeling
Posted on | April 25, 2005 |
In comments here and in a great post on his own blog, Andrew mentions the death of former Queensland Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, a controversial politician if ever there was one, but a figure I haven’t much knowledge of first hand. Here’s an interesting take on the history I missed out on, and there are plenty more listed in Andrew’s post.
I moved to Brisbane just over a year ago, and learned very quickly that there are two ways of distinguishing yourself here: ‘Pre- or Post- Joh’, which is sometimes also known as ‘Pre- or Post- Expo’. Those that survived Joh seem to look on us southern invaders with trepidation, as if we come to this place without much regard or appreciation for what it was like in the not too distant past (this is also matched with the understandable disdain that Sydney people are moving here to take advantage of more affordable housing, which inevitably drives up house prices for locals too, as I’m realising while the next phase of my feminist frat house project takes shape).
In my Honours year I encountered this book. It struck a chord with me at the time, perhaps because of its sheer nihilism that as a hopelessly doomed undergraduate romantic I failed to distinguish from beauty. I now realise it was Andrew McGahan’s haunting voice that started my fascination with Brisbane, a place with a very complicated past it seems quite ambivalent about remembering (like the nation as a whole?) as well as what to me sometimes seems like a pernicious influence on the optimism of its youth. I hear that books like this and this offer some more humourous (in the first instance) and empowering (in the second) accounts of growing up in this city, and I’m looking forward to reading them. But I wonder how else this positivity might manifest, especially for those who don’t read books or who don’t get out of Brisbane to have a look around.
Friends of mine here hardly ever talk about Joh and what it was like when he was in power. It gets talked about in round-a-bout ways, like the refrain about Fortitude Valley, which (apparently!) was once a place full of interesting people and oppositional subcultures but now has the dubious honour of favoured destination for what could only be described as very mainstream weekend revellers. Watching some of them on my way home last Saturday night I wondered myself what would result from ‘the rich, varied and comparatively relaxed life that young Queenslanders now enjoy’.
It’s not that Brisbane is unique in this reticence. In Hobart, for example, I vividly remember the shame of laws criminalising homosexuality - which still made me flinch when Kathleen Hanna made mention of it during Le Tigre’s gig here the other month. Also the unease about forestry policy and environmental issues that if you read the broadsheets you’d think only got going in the last couple of federal elections but have plagued Tasmania’s identity for as long as I can remember. We’d go out to gigs and let bands like Mouth, Little Ugly Girls, Fifty Million Clowns, The Stickmen and The Sea Scouts soothe our anger for us, while we dreamed of elsewheres and times when we would have a chance to do something to change the way things are. Now I think of it, the Fear of Children label/collective that organised so many of those events were really on to something. Conservative governments really should fear the children they spawn: one day, a day that’s very near, it will be our turn to take control, and undo the damage they’ve done.
Comments
9 Responses to “Inaccessible histories: Searching for Brisbane’s structure of feeling”
Leave a Reply
April 25th, 2005 @ 3:49 pm
My mother’s family is from Vegas. My mum grew up in New Farm, and the childhood city she describes couldn’t be more different from the one I’ve visited from 1988 on. So I have a weakness for “Bris-Lit” - I recommend Last Drinks by Andrew McGahan. I am also looking forward to reading “Pig City” - Stafford spoke at the very first conference I went to, in 2001, when the book was going to be called “Security City”, and he read an evocative excerpt.
If you’re curious about the city’s past, you should also look up The Mayne Inheritance - sort of a “Power Without Glory” for Brisbane.
April 25th, 2005 @ 4:14 pm
Praise was a total beacon in the darkness for me in my 20s - geez, that makes my 20s look pretty dark indeed…yeah, well. And pre- and post-Expo really are very different structures of feeling, that’s for sure (although I was only a proper Brisbanite from the very cusp of that change). Boys really did get arrested and beaten with bags of oranges for holding hands with other boys, and such. The coffee was horrible, and eating outside was strictly reserved for Family Picnics. Other hidden Joh-era histories you might like to investigate might be the Lesbian Vampires affair, and the law on the books about hoteliers being entitled (or obliged?) to refuse service to Homosexuals, Child Molesters, and Other Perverts.
So of course this guy goes into a bar (maybe the Regatta? can’t remember) wearing a T-shirt that said “Homosexual, Child Molester, or Other Pervert” - rock on.
April 25th, 2005 @ 4:37 pm
Oh, but despite all that, you know what, thinking about northern migration, gentrification and our lame attempts at urbanity, I really miss the seemingly endless supply of cheap rambling Queenslanders (the houses, that is), with 5 bedrooms for $200 a week a stone’s throw from the city, with their creaky floorboards, tongue-and-groove walls, wide rickety verandahs, full of second hand furniture, with massive overgrown mango trees shading huge backyards, hills hoists, just a short stroll from little corner shops run by eccentric elderly people…or am I making it up? Because I don’t remember anything you could call an ‘apartment’, and is it just me or are all the leafy suburbs deforested now and crammed with cream neo-Tuscan-with-Indonesian-timber-blinds townhouses?
April 25th, 2005 @ 8:47 pm
Hey Mel, I’ve heard about that book. I’m too scared to read it given that I hear my workplace figures very prominently in it! And Jean - Lesbian Vampires? Do tell! And did someone put those T-shirts in production? They’d probably make a fortune this week…
April 25th, 2005 @ 9:30 pm
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/T/Tr/Tracey_Wigginton.htm
April 25th, 2005 @ 10:12 pm
You might be interested in The Hillbilly Dictator, by Evan Whitton (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0733302882) - plenty of unvelievable (but true) stories from the Joh police state and frightening insights into the JBP psyche. From memory, Whitton was one of the ABC journalists behind The Moonlight State, the documentary which started the process that ultimately led to the Fitzgerald inquiry.
April 26th, 2005 @ 1:10 am
Cool post.
Actually the age of Valley subcultures was more early 90s. Aside from the strip clubs and illegal gambling joints, the only subcultures that really went out there in the 80s were gay men, goths and smack dealers. Hang on, I forgot Brisbane Girls Grammar and All Hallows’ underage girls (at the old downstairs bar at the Beat - complete with coffins on the dance floor, black candles and an ice bar. Upstairs was at one stage the Brisbane Boys Club and boys and trannies only.
Most of the clubs and pubs came about as a result of Goss’ relaxation of the licencing areas.
Anything by McGahan is excellent, as are your EMSAH colleague Venny Armanno’s novels. Both capture the feel of 80s Brisbane (pre-Vegas suffixation) well.
But the best intro probably is Andrew Stafford’s excellent Pig City, which started its life as a QUT Cultural Studies thesis.
I remember the Lesbian vampires - the murder took place in a park near where my first share house was. Back then in Kangaroo Point there were about 5 illegal brothels, the most dodgy cops, and three knifings in the week I moved in in 1987.
But I could potentially rattle on about youth in Brissie for ever, so I won’t and just link to this post instead.
April 26th, 2005 @ 1:11 am
I meant licencing laws and forgot to close a bracket - it’s late. Exhausted from the Alumni Booksale!
June 25th, 2005 @ 12:25 am
I remember The Stickmen in Hobart at the Doghouse..what ever happened to that type of music..Self Destructive? perhaprs..definately The dog house is now a backpackers.. bloody third ferry