So there I was, sitting in a car with the windows down, boot hatch up, babysitting a toddler who’d fallen asleep while driving around Brisbane in the summer heat. Hubby had to go into a shop to buy a special cement paint and so I waited with bubby in the hot car, not only in temperatures of the mid-30 degrees, but also parked in full sun on a concrete/bitumen carpark. It was sort of like those stories about naughty parents who leave their kids unattended in their vehicles while they gamble at the casino. Well, sort of, but without the life-endangering extremes and the possibility of winning lots of money. That sort of excitement we can do without.

A simple trip into the city from the suburbs for an errand turned into a 45-minute wait (excluding travel time) that tested my ability to look coolly nonchalant as my hubby negotiated with salespeople in an air-conditioned depot. I started taking photos of the rusty metal shed beside our car and found that my behaviour was deemed suspicious, as a staff member wandered over and asked what I was doing. When I explained I was taking shots of the artistic rust while I waited for hubby, the salesman looked stumped for a response, and simply nodded and went back into his workplace. (I thought of suggesting he react differently: perhaps he could offer me a cool drink of water, or even bring me a progress report of what hubby was up to. But no, he was quickly swallowed up in the shimmering heat rising off the bitumen.)

Going to Brisbane is always frustrating. We often have a list of things we want to accomplish and are naïve enough to end up feeling very frustrated at the amount of time everything takes to get from one place to the other, the time it takes to navigate through shops and battle the crowds, and wait like cattle in the inevitable queues. 

Yet the traffic is always hectic, and people rush around like ants when walking on the footpaths, or in the shopping centres. I have now realised that the reason why city people dart about in impatience is to make up for all the time they’ve lost waiting in queues – at shops, at intersections, at roadworks, and so on.

We opted for a change of pace the next day and went to the Chermside Water Park. This is built in conjunction with the local council pool but has all the slides and fountains and pools for recreational swimming. Sounded like fun, so after finding some togs stretchy enough to fit myself into, we bundled up the family and set off. When we arrived, we discovered the ‘water park’ section of the pool was not open for another half an hour, so we did what all the rest of the well-trained city people did – we waited. The small pool was open though, so the little kids without the same sense of priority and self-control jumped in and cooled off. Hey, water’s water.

Once the slides were open, we ‘baggs’-ed a bench for our gear, then walked up numerous flights of stairs which oddly enough, smelled like urine. Out of all the places a child with poor bladder control could let it go, why the stairs? And why would so many people do this to the extent that you could smell it - even though the staircase is open to the sun and rain and must surely be cleansed regularly from bodily fluids? I wondered about the effect this acidic stuff must have on the metal stairs, and I hoped I wouldn’t receive the dubious honour of being the first customer to fall through wee-weakened steps. That’s not the kind of notoriety I want. 

At the top of the tower I was delighted to find I had heaps of time to ponder the science of urine and its chemical properties, since kids and adults lined up in a few different queues, and guess what! - we had to wait. A fifteen-minute interlude to meditate on life and other such weighty matters as suntans and swimming costumes for the over-30s…. It was a transcendental experience that ended in a two-minute descent into chlorinated water.

It all got a bit too much and hubby and I questioned why even our leisure time was spent not actually relaxing, but standing in line to take our turns at recreational activities. It seems strange that two extremes of pace exist in the city – stress-inducing haste, and mind-numbing waiting. Surely it makes sense to balance these out a bit, and have a slower approach to life while still making the overall day more productive. Like the tortoise and the hare, we could benefit from the philosophy that ‘slow and steady wins the race’. And while quoting a classic storyteller such as Aesop, I also cite the equally profound singer Prince, who sang about mindlessness of working in a shop: “It seems that I was busy doing something close to nothing, but different than the day before”.* 

Perhaps allowing millions of people to live in one spot and expecting there to be adequate services for all, is a bit ambitious. Brisbane and its expanding outposts are continually pushing the limits of practical ways to enable its residents to commute to work and school in a reasonable amount of time, while maintaining ‘quality of life.’ I am not a town planner or an engineer but this issue has entered my thoughts before. It might seem crazy, but why not get most of them to live somewhere else? And I know Sydney has offered incentives for its residents to sell up and have a ‘tree change’; maybe there needs to be more incentive such as this in all cities.

Currently Brisbane is offering this to its potential home buyers: We are overcrowded; most schools are too big to manage the best educational and social outcomes for their students; the weather is stinking hot in summer since only a minute fraction of residents can live close enough to the beach for a sea-breeze; pollution covers the sky and star-gazing is becoming merely memories for most, and community-mindedness is rare. But what you do get is the chance to battle it out amongst hundreds of other applicants to work in a high-paying career. This will be the means to pay for your overpriced real estate. And if you have too much money from your ludicrous wages, we have shopping centres, fun parks and fuel stations to waste your earnings on things you don’t need to somehow fill that emotional and spiritual void from your stressful weekdays.

And the weird thing is, more than 2 million people look at that, shrug and say, “Yeah, why not? Sounds good to me.”

When I was a girl (said in a Glenn Robbins/ Uncle Arthur voice) we drove from Brisbane to Stanthorpe to visit our rellies, taking the Western Freeway towards the outskirts of Brisbane. There was a long stretch of farmland that showed the distinction between Brisbane and Ipswich. Now the houses and businesses have spread and merged into one big mass and the only way you know you have entered another city is the sign welcoming you to Ipswich. The same can be said for Caboolture to the north, and Redlands to the south.

I know all things must change and growth is seen to be a good thing for the economy and potential of any urban society. But come on! In the natural world, an amoeba gets so big before it divides and grows in separate entities. Surely there must be some limit on how big a population can get before it must divide and set out to form a new community somewhere else.

Apparently Brisbane has the largest population growth for any Australian capital city. It is also the largest of Australia’s six capital cities by geographic area and the third largest municipality in the world, spread over 2,116 square km. Ù Now that may not mean much to you, but it means the whole sustainability of the south-east Qld corner is under threat, with ramifications for the rest of us within cooee. Just mention Traveston dam, electricity demands or the Inland Rail Link and you get my drift.

I glimpsed a document about the inland rail link – ‘a proposal to enhance South East Queensland’s Rail Freight Network’. Any development that means buying up privately-owned land and adding traffic to a previously quiet rural area is always taken seriously. One of the headings on this document is “How the Premier can build a much needed rail freight corridor to the Port of Brisbane without being chased by residents with pitchforks”. Some people would beat around the bush and cushion their language a bit more, but these consultants can see the possible effects quite clearly. I like their approach.

So the issues are many, the urgency is great, and yet, the most pressing question remains – how can Brisbane provide enough services for all its residents to access quickly and easily? And by this, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about specifically. Yes - how can we get enough waterslides so that all visitors to any given water park can ride down with a minimum of waiting time? That is the question.

I’d like to see Anna Bligh respond to that.

 

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