Things I Love Thursday: April 14

Can you believe how far into 2011 we are? This year is flying by. I hope you're finding time amidst the rush to enjoy life's little pleasures. Things like:

Rainy mornings + porridge, cinnamon & golden syrup

Rainy nights + a good book + tea + Green & Black's Maya Gold dark chocolate. This stuff is my crack.

Subsituting ridiculous, made-up facts when you don't know the real answers at trivia (after all, you never know when you might be awarded extra points for humour).

This incredible list of flapper slang, which is frankly the duck's quack, the cat's particulars and the monkey's eyebrows simultaneously. Ie, it is fantastic.

Amazing purple and orange sunsets over the Brisbane river. The cityscape gleaming in almost unnaturally golden light, cranes poking up here and there like bendy straws in an elaborate cocktail.
Yoga. Oh my, it is so good. Stretching out all those random sets of muscles, cracking up at all the animal-named poses (cobras, cats and cows, locusts, eagles and the dreaded downward dogs), tantalising aromas wafting from the Indian restaurant down the street, almost falling asleep in the meditation at the end of the session, even the ommmm-chanting is kind of cool with everyone making the same sound in a darkened room. Especially since our instructor is the first yogi I have encountered who actually has a sense of humour. I had to laugh, though, at Garance's all-too-familiar take on yoga - the inching boredom of the class, the awkwardness of the poses, the all-consuming smugness once it's over and raving to the uninitiated about how balancing it all is...

Writing about the impending zombie apocalypse, YouTubing the Bush Tucker Man and researching data visualisations... For my job!

Having a job.

Continually confusing Deerhoof and Deerhunter... Listening to and loving them both, anyway. Deerhoof Vs Evil is fantastic, by the way.

Contemplating taking to Baby Blue's forks with a sharpie, inspired by this amazing bike refurbishment by illustrator Pete Fong. If only I could draw beards that well...

This afternoon I left work on my bike, the sunset fading to lilac and the new My Morning Jacket song in my ears, and out of nowhere had this overwhelming rush of euphoria. Be it slap-up broke pasta dinners with my sister, swapping music with old school friends, Sunday afternoons playing trucks with a one-year-old, road-trip-planning emails from Pakistan or hours on skype with the cutest boy in all of Brooklyn... I feel profoundly motherfucking lucky at how many first-rate people are in my life. I hope you do too. xx

It's time we Met

The antidote to Tuesday blues, and indeed a shamefully extended blog inspiration hiatus? A night of great art and fascinating insights to how it's curated. Brisbane's Gallery Of Modern Art tonight hosted a talk by Gary Tinterow, a curator with 25 years' experience at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Now the Met, if you haven't been there, is like heaven on earth. Perched in Central Park, with an impressive facade onto Fifth Avenue, it houses acres of amazing art and artefacts from throughout history. I would happily part with my left pinkie to spend a night locked in the Met. I'd walk around in a suit of armour (til it got too heavy, then I'd switch it out for something from the Costume Institute), play the old musical instruments, have a nap spooning a Rodin sculpture and basically just stare at my favourite paintings til I grew cross-eyed. Watching the sun rise over the Temple of Dendur would have to be pretty spectacular, too.

Tinterow's talk was a meandering stroll through the history of the museum, framed through the evolution of the collection he creates - modern and contemporary art - from 1870 to the present day. As well as being a delicious overview of the art of the past couple hundred years, this was a fascinating insight into how a great museum collection is acquired. And it was peppered with the kind of anecdotes only an experienced curator can collect.

Like the last words of H.O. Havemeyer. He and his second wife Louisine were filthy rich and avid collectors. (There's a fabulous article about her here from TIME Magazine in 1930) Louisine had a fortunate penchant for French art far advanced to what the Met was showing in the 1920s. Courbet, Manet, Degas and Renoir were among her favourites, and the collection at their amazing house on 66th Street (interiors all designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, swoon) had a big impact on the tastes of well-to-do New Yorkers. They tried in vain to lead a friend of theirs, Bingham, into amassing his own collection, starting him off by letting him buy some of the works they coveted - like Degas' famous "The Dance Class". Bingham never did collect with the Havemeyers' enthusiasm, much to their chagrin, and on old Havemeyer's deathbed his last command was to "try to get Bingham's Degas".

When you see grand-sounding names plastered over a wing of a museum you don't tend to think much about these benefactors. How they came to amass such crazy wealth that they could acquire a breath-taking art collection and then leave it to a museum. How curators at that museum might have cultivated those benefactors, perhaps in a decades-long flirtation, a delicate seduction.

There was an eccentric Ms Milton de Groot, who brought with her from Holland an impressive collection. She always intended to leave it to the Met, but until she died she kept it in her modest apartment, where all the museum's curators at some point were forced to take tea.

A sadder story was that of Scofield Thayer, who I visualise as quite the young dandy in the early 1920s when he ran a literary magazine called The Dial, which published the likes of TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Thayer's pal from Harvard ee cummings. Thayer took off for Europe where he collected artworks to use as illustrations in the magazine. He suffered from what Tinterow described as "sexual anxieties" and ended up on the couch of none other than Dr Freud - who encouraged him to collect the erotic works of Klimt and Schiele. Thayer lost his mind and was institutionalised in the mid/late 1920s; his collection came to the Met, but only after his death in the 80s.

There were a few decades of lean years for bequests, until the Annenbergs donated their collection in the 90s. Publishing magnate Walter Annenberg had been Nixon's ambassador in London and to the Brits' delight had redecorated the embassy with his epic collection of French impressionists and post-impressionists. When the Annenbergs returned to the US they had a bunch of museums contest for the right to collection - Tinterow described it as being like a reality TV show competition. Naturally the Met won, and the Annenbergs even helped the museum acquire works above and beyond their collection. Including Van Gogh's "Wheat Field With Cypresses", likely his first painting after being allowed to leave the asylum (after the whole ear thing). Tinterow said when they unwrapped the painting at the Met it was so fresh they found traces of pollen on the surface.

Such is the work of the curators of these great museums - stitching together the grand collections of rich benefactors with smaller donations from individuals, working out the narrative of the overall collection, identifying the gaps and then making acquisitions to fill those gaps.

Making these acquisitions highlights the conflict curators face - pulled in one direction by advanced collectors wanted them to push the boundaries, pulled back by often conservative boards of trustees. Tinterow related how the museum purchased Jasper Johns' amazing "White Flag" for an even more amazing price in the tens of millions of dollars. Decades earlier the same painting had been on loan display, in the 1960s, and was offered to the museum for $15,000 but the trustees declined. "We're at the mercy", Tinterow put it, "of the vagaries of taste and the market".

As well as exhorbitant purchases there are other options for acquiring works. Sometimes a private collector will offer to purchase a piece in shares with the museum and they take turns hanging it - two years in my house, two years in your museum, etc. In recent years Tinterow says the museum has done a number of retrospective exhibitions of ageing but still living modern artists, which often end in acquisitions. "And when we can't acquire a work, we'll borrow it," Tinterow says, citing Damien Hirst's shark floating in formaldehyde, "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living", on loan from the Connecticut billionaire who bought it from Charles Saatchi for $8million.

As Tinterow moved into the most recent acquisitions, the idea of participatory art became more common - works that come alive or mean something only when the audience interacts with them. The works currently on show at GOMA are an excellent illustration of this idea, and Tinterow says it's also a parable for the Met itself. Whether on the grand scale of donating a collection, or the simple act of visiting and marvelling: it is communities and people who love art who bring these institutions to life.

Love & war

Lovelorn Brisvegans: you have but days left to wallow in the sweet sadness that is the State Library of Queensland's Love & War exhibition. On loan from the Australian War Memorial, it's a lovely little exhibition exploring the many stages of love as magnified by the pressures of wartime.

From meetings and rushed courtships before men were shipped out, to tearful goodbyes and correspondence-fuelled seperations, and ultimately reunion or loss. There are some remarkably intimate insights into love affairs spanning a century; and unfortunately a happy ending is never guaranteed.

My mum and I went in on a Saturday, expecting a lot of love letters. In actuality the exhibition is more made up of mementoes, souveniers, and photographs and paintings. There are wedding dresses, one of which a bride went on to loan to a number of other wartime brides. There are handmade keepsakes, amateur cartoons, even some very early photoshop work from World War I!

Given the way colloquial language ebbs and flows over time I was really interested to see the ways people spoke and wrote about love (and lust!) over different decades. Some of the language of love and yearning is obviously eternal; other phrases seem dated and stiff. The rather chaste wishes of a soldier to lie with his sweetheart in a quiet bush hideaway and "let my hands roam about your face, arms and hair" seems adorably quaint.

Small acts of quiet romanticism now preserved behind glass now seem all the more remarkable for the stoicness of the men who were inspired to commit them. My favourite story was of Robert Towers who had a brooch made from the Australian coat of arms in the centre of a shiny florin. He gave the brooch to his sweetheart, Lois, and wore the outer part of the coin on a chain around his neck. When the two pieces were joined after he returned from Malaya, he said, they'd be together forever. It was 1945 before Lois heard anything of Robert; caring for freed prisoners of war, a patient told her Robert had died of illness in 1943 after being captured by the Japanese. His part of the florin was returned to her with his belongings.

So sad, you can barely imagine how excruicating it must have been for her not hearing from him for years, holding on to hope that he would come home ok. His token of his love for her was so simple and thoughtful. Makes you think, every love is so unique.

It's not all sad stories. There are beautiful romances that lasted through and beyond the wars, tear-jerking reunions, happy endings. I liked the inclusion of same-sex couples. And then there's funny stories like a young woman who ended up with dozens of penpals after her photo ran in a troop magazine. There are bawdy pin-ups, crass cartoons, and creepy propaganda posters.

Sunday (March 6) is the last day you can catch Love & War, on level 2 at the State Library of Queensland. You can have a sneak peek via the Australian War Memorial's website. It's well worth a look and, just quietly, the air-con in there is phenomenal.

Plus, if you've been feeling sorry for yourself for something as paltry as missing your long distance lover, reading the stories of people who lost their sweethearts and husbands to conflicts in distant lands will promptly put your woes into perspective.

Cabin fever

In a perfect illustration of how much Brisbane feels like it's come alive in the years since I moved away, I fell for a little cafe on the weekend which was a musty old pharmacy the last time I lived in the neighbourhood. My little sister's just moved into that area that's either Ashgrove or Red Hill or Paddington, depending on who you ask. Her new pad's a few streets from the townhouse I called home for most of my uni days, in Bramble Terrace. She and her mates recommended this new-ish hole-in-the-wall on Enoggera Terrace. It's called either Cabin or Cabinessence, depending on how fancy you want to sound.

Cabin itself isn't fancy. If you want anything other than coffee, mind-blowing avocado toast or a pot of tea, you'd best look elsewhere. My sister recounted a telling anecdote about when she took a couple of more conservative country boys out for breakfast. When she asked at the counter for a menu, she was told by the person behind it, "I am the menu". The boys were already out the door.

Granted, our coffees took their sweet time in arriving to our street-side table. But when they did, they were gooood, and served on vintage saucers while each table's sugar bowl sported a different old novelty teaspoon. Little touches like these made it feel like a treat to sit on cushion-topped milk crates and mismatched old chairs, flocks of pot plants adding to the nanna's-sunroom vibe. I've passed the joint a few times since, and it's always pretty packed. And - seriously - that avocado toast is something else.


It was all part of a perfect Brizvegas Saturday: an early start at the West End markets + round two coffee at Cabin + window shopping down Latrobe Terrace into Paddington + accidentally spending the last of my funds on a cheeky lil Karen Walker dress (seriously, Meow Meow's closing down and there are some crazy bargains to be had) + lunch dumplings from the Kelvin Grove markets + an afternoon nap in the air-con + riding Baby Blue over to West End, listening to Yeasayer while my huge old pleated skirt threatened Marilyn Monroe moments + rounding out the night boogying to blues at the Boundary after jugs of Coopers and a delicious cheap dinner.

So yeah - I'm gonna be in Brisbane for a couple months. Wanna hang out? x

A day on the green

Many athletic pursuits claim status as "the sport of kings", but for the lazy there's one sport that takes the crown. Lawn bowls. Traditionally the domain of the retired - snowy-haired old ducks and elder gents with their shorts pulled up to their armpits - lawn bowls has enjoyed a renaissance among the young in recent years. A number of factors could account for this revival - the dapper all-white dress code, the popularity of the movie Crackerjack, clubs relaxing their previously draconian rules to attract a younger clientele. But mostly it would have to be down to the fact that uni students will always sniff out cheap drinks, and the prices at bowls clubs are straight out of the 1980s.

Bowls always held a special place in my heart. Dad's promise as a footy player was cut short by injury, so he took up lawn bowls. He was the youngest club member by at least a decade or two, but embraced the sport with gusto. There is, after all, something rather zen about a sport you can play while holding a beer. As a result my sister and I spent quite a few childhood hours running around the St George bowls club high on "red drinks" and the acid fumes of salt-and-vinegar chips.

There's something really calm and dignified about the expanses of lawn (don't talk to me about the new, neon "supergrass" greens) and players doddering about all in white. Of course, some of that dignity evaporates when you head to a club like Toowong, deep in University of Queensland heartland. On Sunday my sister threw a surprise 25th birthday party there for her boyfriend, complete with themed cake:

It was a fantastic day out - the rain held off, everyone dressed up in op-shop finery, by the end of the night everyone was singing and dancing in the club-house. And it's not every day you can buy drinks at the bar while wearing no shoes....

These are old as the hills (or, at least, my own uni days) but here are some haiku about lawn bowls:

Saturdays with dad
Softdrinks while he worked the bar
No shoes on the green.

Scolded by ladies
Sharp faces, white hats; great towers
Of varicose veins.

The men grew old
Pants pulled higher, more empty
Stools, pokies chirrup

Now I too wear white
With pride and cheap-drunk joy and
Only a little irony

Happy birthday Shed!

Tempting fête

1 x bag chocolate fudge, 1 x bag rocky road, and 1 x bag melted Russian caramels:
$10

Home-made pavlova:
$5

Assorted second hand books (2 x Little Golden Books remembered from childhood, 1 x Hating Alison Ashley, 1 x Douglas Copeland short stories, 2 x PRESS GANG BOOKS DEAR GOD I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP):
$3

Hearing an outstanding band of 14-year-olds called Here Be Pirates cover "Hey Joe" (as well as many great originals), while watching small children poke, prod and harass cute farm animals:
Free.

Graceville State School fête:
Priceless.

Say cheese

Waaay overdue, I finally made use of a photography tutorial I paid for months ago. It's about bloody time I got the hang of the manual settings. Paul was a great teacher and met my sister and I in New Farm park, and was very patient with us!

Inspired, today I also picked up a new lens for my camera. Nothing overly fancy, but it will be great to play with the settings more, improve my portraits and food shots, and generally have more control over the photos. Now to find a good (but not too bulky) tripod I can tote around, particularly with all the sights to see overseas!

Bridging Brisbane

To my knowledge there isn't a Cycle Chic chapter in Brisbane yet, but surely it's only a matter of time. In lieu of a formal Cycle Chic Sunday ride, an old friend and I improvised our own; riding from Rosalie through Milton's Park Road and then following the riverside bikeway all the way to New Farm park for a lunch of fish and chips.

There are so many great rides to do in this city, and signs everywhere of growing infrastructure for bike lovers. In New Farm, for example, there are racks and pay stations going up for a new bike hire scheme due to open late this year. Like Melbourne's experience, I daresay there will be teething issues, particularly with the dilemma caused by our mandatory helmet laws. But hopefully it will get more people on bikes!

The council seems to have been really proactive with their investment in the cycleways, and their surrounds. Everything is very colourful, particularly these blues around the newly opened Go-Between Bridge which joins Coronation Drive to South Brisbane.

Closer to the city, it's all primary colours, bold yellows and reds as well as blues. The paths are marked to leave cyclists and pedestrians in no doubt of where they should be!

Everytime I come back to Brisbane there seems to be another bridge... and this ride is a great way to see them all. The aforementioned Go-Between soon gives way to the spiky Kurilpa (or "chopsticks") bridge, which takes you from the city right to the doorstep of the modern art gallery and state library. Pass under the chopsticks, then the William Jolly, and as you continue along the riverside path the mangroves are right beside you.

Soon you'll hit the Goodwill Bridge which is just for pedestrians, which you could cross to reach Southbank parklands. But if you keep going, you're momentarily plunged into the tropical shade of the Botanic Gardens. More mangroves eventually give way to the moorings of dozens of bobbing boats. This used to be a favourite haunt of mine in my uni days - a quick walk from QUT's Gardens Point campus, you can perch up under a jacaranda or a flame tree and watch the boats and passing tourists.

But keep going. The path snakes around the pier, and you'll have to dodge more than a few pedestrians as you get closer and closer to the Story Bridge. Once you pass under it the path becomes a floating deck over the river, which is quite special.... Here you can see the Story Bridge in the background too (not to mention beautiful Baby Blue):

New Farm Park is a lovely end point to the journey. There you can jump on a ferry and keep exploring... stop for a feed... check out some art or performance at the Powerhouse, or just watch the world go by. There's always something going on here, especially on a weekend - a wedding, a photoshoot, a huge all-in soccer game, ever changing graffiti...

One from the Archive

Back in Brizvegas, the traditional Boundary beers later gave way to a Thursday night tipple at Archive across the road.

It's a bar that's rather a strange beast, but it works; where beer nerds and word nerds converge... and even some bike nerds, judging by the fixies racked up on the fence outside, and the beards anchored to beers inside.


The decor sums up the culture clash... Boutique beer cartons jostling for space alongside shelves heaving with clothbound tomes. An entire feature wall is papered with old newsprint, and the bar itself is made of old books...

Yo mama

Cutest. Baby. Ever.

At dawn

Sunrise from the plane window, Sydney to Brisbane. Not so much looking forward to the return leg...

Naming rights

It's been a while between updates on our blog mascot, Handsome Darling, and his two girlfriends Cherry and Valentine. But today - big news. The sausage factory is doubling in size and Handsome's harem will grow too. Best of all, with three new sausage dogs joining my friend's breeding operation, I finally get some naming rights! Can't decide between an amusing sausage-related name (Kransky? Bratwurst? Cheerio??) or the more egomaniacal route of simply bestowing my own name. Any suggestions?

Time for sleep. Setting sail at an ungodly hour in the morning, for Brisbane, Byron, a wedding, girly catch-ups and hopefully some warmer climes!

Law unto himself

Benjamin Law is an immensely talented writer from Queensland so when his first book, The Family Law, was released a few weeks ago I couldn't wait to read it. The book is a memoir of Ben's childhood as the third of five kids growing up as one of the first Asian families on the Sunshine Coast. On first glance it might seem odd for a twenty-something writer to make his first book a memoir, but once you get a taste of the family in question it's a no-brainer.

Ben is probably best known and loved for his work as a senior writer for Frankie Magazine, and he's also had a lot of work published in The Monthly. There are dozens of amazing writers of the same generation around Australia, but I think Ben is unique (and uniquely adored) because he's a virtuoso at balancing humour with authenticity. Ben has an eye for a winning anecdote, and a love of words that lights up the page. The book opens with Ben describing the family dictionary, a homemade reference book compiled each year from family slang and jargon.

"Some entries are universally suggestive and you wouldn't need to be a family member to understand them. No one needs to stretch their imagination to figure out what a slitoris might be. Heurgh - uttered as if you're dry-retching - denotes disgust and horror at something. Flahs is a bouquet of fancy flowers, and scrongtrum still sounds funny, even if you haven't seen the difficulty my mother has in pronouncing 'scrotum'."

The obvious reference point for this book is the work of David Sedaris. If you're not familiar with Sedaris, for god's sake get reading or listen to his readings/talks on NPR. Both Sedaris and Ben are sharply witty, self-conscious and self-deprecating, openly gay and blessed with colourful family stories they pillage with joy. The differences are all in context - Sedaris' mid-western boy living in Paris might have an edge of sophistication, but Ben's world is all suburban shopping malls, weekends spent touring the Sunny Coast's low-rent amusement parks (Superbee, Forest Glen Deer Sanctuary, "the Big Bottle" constructed from countless stinking beer empties), and the vague sense of lawlessness of schools perched on the edge of wild tropical vegetation.

Like any childhood worth its salt, Ben's memoir is bristling with cringe-worthy moments of embarrassment. In other writers it might feel deplorable to serve up one's most humiliating moments in the name of self-deprecating egotism, but Ben's so forthright about loving the spotlight at whatever cost it's kinda charming. There's an entire chapter on his dealings with a talent school in a bid to land his dream role on Home & Away. When he finally gets an audition for a speaking role in a film, he only realises he's being typecast when he's asked if he can tone down his Australian accent and talk more Asian.

Ben's mum Jenny emerges as the undisputed star of the book - expect a Facebook fan page for her any day now. One of my favourite vignettes from the book plays with the recurring motif of Jenny's love of learning new english words, and it also gives you an indication of the unapologetic toilet humour the book sometimes employs.

Controversially, Mum insists she first learned the word cunt from me. I don't remember the exact circumstances clearly enough to verify the claim, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were true. Mum says that afterwards, as often seems to happen when you've learned a new word or concept, she inexplicably started seeing and hearing it everywhere. 'The next on on SBS,' she told me, 'there was this European movie with a woman screaming at her husband because she found out he was having an affair. She yelled to him: "You only like her because her cunt smells like eggplant!" That's what it said in the subtitles. And suddenly I realised that I knew what this word was. Cunt. It ws that same word you told me not to use at parent-teacher meetings.'

The Family Law is a real memoir for my generation. It's a bit like the 80s exhibition at the Powerhouse in the sense that it's so exciting to see all these hallmarks of your childhood curated together, but it feels a bit weird because you don't feel old enough for your childhood to be the stuff of museums and memoir!

Ben's on the press trail at the moment - his hometown appearances at Avid Reader this Thursday and Friday sold out weeks ago. If you manage to get in I'd love to hear about it - on one of the evenings he'll appear in conversation with his mum! He's also going to be at Readings in Melbourne on June 17. There doesn't seem to be a Sydney event booked in yet but I'm hoping to help organise something through work this week. Will keep you posted!

The Family Law is a finished-in-a-day, laugh-out-loud-on-the-bus, dog-ear-every-second-page read. It's the kind of book that regularly throws up the conundrum of whether to call your mum/sister/mate immediately to share a new gem, or whether to keep reading. It's the kind of book you want to buy for everyone you love. It's hilarious and moving to get such a generously intimate peek into the eccentricities of another family. For a sneak peek try this piece of Ben's from The Lifted Brow.

Just get the book. You won't regret it.

West End story

If ever you find yourself in Brisbane on a Friday night, here's my recipe for an outstanding evening. You will need:

• shoes comfortable enough for a good few hours' dancing and stumbling
• at least two fabulous friends
• a functioning sense of humour
• little to no dignity

Step 1: Preparatory beers at the Boundary Hotel in West End
From the sticky tiles to the toothless regulars, the Boundary is the kind of pub that's almost impossible to find these days, at least outside of small towns. The barmaids are surly, but you can hardly blame them when you consider their clientele. It's grotty and unpredictable and without fail the house sound system plays Fleetwood Mac and Neil Young's Harvest. With the scale of development in West End (the HiFi Bar is next door), this utopia may not last. Revel in the filth while you can.

Step 2: Dinner at Green Bamboo
At least, I think that's the name of the place. It's a block or so down toward Vulture St from the Boundary, and serves up super cheap, super delicious Vietnamese/Chinese food. BYO some cheap wine from the Boundary bottle-o (friends and I have found critical mass at one bottle per person) and be sure to order the salt-and-pepper whole flounder. (pictured) It will blow your mind. But the lights are very bright and sooner or later you're going to want to head...

Step 3: Back to the Boundary for Blind Dog
Best bluesman I've ever seen, with the possible exception of an amazing night in a Bleecker St club, is Blind Dog. He wears a top hat, and along with a revolving-door cast of backing players has had the Boundary's Friday night residency for as long as I've known the pub to exist. He's ubiquitous around West End, and the folklore goes that he could have been a huge star and followed his talent anywhere - but he found Brisbane's going rate for heroin the most agreeable and never left. The dancefloor packs out for his laidback blues jams, and it's also fun now and then to indulge in a sport we like to call "slut or prostitute?". You never know who you'll bump into. But you can be assured of a memorable evening. Let's danz!

Breakfast in Vegas

Streets of my town

I've been thinking about Australian music from an international perspective lately; what are the songs we want to be known by, by someone who doesn't know us?

I keep coming back to the pop greats, this 80s sound of great Aussie pop/rock. The Church, The Triffids, The Go-Betweens, and above all, Crowded House. There's a certain magic in the production of all these bands around the late 80s, early 90s; all shiny shiny treble guitars, clean and reverberating with all the enormous breadth of the panoramic Australian horizon. Can we even claim Crowded House as definitively Australian? Certainly not as their very NZ incarnation, Split Enz. From this period you can't deny the best song is "Message To My Girl", a very special song to me.



Though I'm frightened by the words
Think it's time that it was heard
So I'll sing it to the world
A simple message to my girl
No more empty self-posession
Vision swept under the mat
It's no new year's resolution
It's more than that

Fuck, this song was made the year I was born.

And even from the Crowded House days, god, it's hard to pick a single song from this band. I'm having a great time on YouTube, ogling youthful Neil Finns wailing I'd better be home soon and so on. "Into Temptation", that delicious lyrical tryst of lusty longing.

The most Queensland of them all is, of course, the Go-Betweens. Friends know of my obsession with someday writing the book about Grant McLennan.



And don't the sun look good today?
But the rain is on its way
Watch the butcher shine his knives
And this town is full of battered wives

It doesn't get much better.

Hot town, summer in the city

This is slightly lazy but I feel like it's the best tribute to another steamy dreamy Brisvegas weekend, now I'm back down south and in need of some catch-up sleep. It's a scrambled old diary entry from back in December...

Fell in love with a West End pool over a sluggish 2km this morning, panting over a kick board as Stefan's space needle threatened to prick the storm-sagging clouds. I was less a shark-like figure slicing through the water than a milk white dugong wrinkling the surface, but it was good.

Magpies (or possibly crows) are tap dancing on the tin roof to a scottish tattoo. Everything, or at least every green, is verdantly over-saturated in the overcast early afternoon. I long for the Boundary. For beer and blues and many, many cigarettes, the endless cycle of quenching and burning, half stuck to a vinyl bar stool, beads of sweat rolling haltingly down the contours of sweltering calves... and then a storm rolling in with violent thunder and lightning-lit, violet bruisy clouds.

Yesterday was the kind of Brisbane heat mirage that makes me wonder why I thought it was such a good idea to move back. Prodding, unmerciful heat and humidity adding dull kilos to the clothes hanging limply from bodies that feel bigger and heavier and lethargically sluggish.

But then you're riding along that dull gold river and the breeze finally offers some resuscitation. The colours are different here, bleached out like old photos under the flat, unforgiving sun. A climate seemingly bent on keeping you silent and prostate, sighing in brief stolen moments of air conditioning. Days with all the circular monotony of ceiling fans, lazily slicing air as thick and sinewy as overripe fruit. And it all seems so inescapable and hopeless until that moment of release, delivered in a mouthful of cool beer and a breeze of relief and then the streets pop and fizz like all the throngs of people propping up the bars have been waiting for, languishing for.

And we're reborn and all we need is a packet of salt and vinegar chips stinging the lips, the acrid bittersweet taste of childhood Friday nights while our parents went through the same dance. Fighting for a plastic seat at the Pacman table, bleeps and beeps over the roiling, rowdy rumble of RSL, carpet sticky with spilled beer and cigarette ash. Then being outside under the stars, and games with running and hiding and always with the counting and the big kids sneaking off and my sister being annoying or wait, was that me?

All these memory melting moments suspended in amber.

The second city

When I came up with the name for this blog, I was anticipating spending a lot more time in Brisbane as well as Sydney. I love Brizvegas – so many great bars and buildings and back alleys, book-marking memories from boozy uni days – so it’s been sad that I haven’t spent any time there since my summer holidays. Particularly since Brisbane is also home to my second bike, Baby Blue, a powder blue confection of restored treadly prettiness.

It’s a city that’s really well set up for bikes. That track curving around the river is fantastic; at certain times of day when the tide is up, water laps right up to the path… at other times you get that fertile, foetid mangrove mud smell. One of my last nights there I rode with a friend right around to New Farm Park, and the lights reflecting off Story Bridge were spectacular.

To me Brisbane is all about swimming pools, condensation on your beer glass (pots, not schooners), nights of red wine and chain-smoking on balconies, bodies steaming with dancing at the Zoo, hippies at the West End markets, lawn bowls at Merthyr and 3am Bizarre Love Triangle dance-offs upstairs at Ric’s. I don’t think you can do that last one anymore though :(

I love the Brisbane of John Birmingham’s books - his seedy sprawling sharehouses and heat-addled cast of unhinged gonzo characters. When I moved to Brisbane to start uni, I expected my life to turn into another chapter of He Died With A Felafel In His Hand - a dog-eared copy of which I’d pored over as we ground out the last days of our boarding school sentence in Toowoomba. Of course, times had changed, but when I eventually went to a Red Hill party where someone busted out a bucket bong I was like FINALLY! Getting to meet JB has been one of the best perks of my job.

Anyway! Finally making a flying visit back up to Vegas this weekend, to share some anti-Valentines Day beers with a bunch of great mates. Will take Baby Blue out for a spin (she’s now in my baby sister’s custody), do some organic brunch and second-hand-book-shopping in West End, and as many fun Brisbane things as I can fit into two days. So hopefully next week I’ll have lots of great photos from the trails of the second city. Viva Brizvegas!