The Flood — 2 years on PT 2

PART 1

That Wednesday the sky eventually turned a brilliant blue which apparently was the same thing that happened back in 1974. It was eerie how the rain had stopped overnight but the water crept up and stuck around like a ghost.

And then there was an overwhelming stillness about the world which defied the vibe I felt — which was essentially that this was the most profound thing that has happened to Brisbane in my living memory.

When I got back home, it was still quite early and as I casually posted these pictures on FB — I didn’t realise how shocking this might be to wake up to for a few of my friends:

But it was also shocking to the Brisbane people not living anywhere near the River. To them Brisbane must have seemed entirely normal, but perhaps just a bit quieter than usual. And so I think some people actually felt a bit left-out or a bit detached from this situation — which they perhaps overcompensated for later — something I will examine soon.

Anyway I soon went riding again and arrived at a deserted Coronation Drive which was already covered in leaf littler — a state that might appear quite normal — but to me it was stupidly bizarre. And it was also obvious all the residents of the buildings around had been evacuated.

Heading towards the city with all six lanes to myself I felt a bit like the last person on Earth. At Hale Street I was stopped by flood water but a cop was posted here for some reason and instead of sending me back — he directed me up the flyover (and on what normally would have been the wrong side). Then as I was mashing up a policeman on a motorbike seemed to be giving me an escort over. Soon I was on the expressway at North Quay and through to the city.

I remember savouring the experience, riding slow and sucking everything I could in telling myself this could well be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Around the city was more sandbagging — as far as the Queen Street Mall. But to me it seemed only Charlotte Street was seriously flooded. On the way home I saw that Suncorp was under water and so was the adjacent part of Milton Road.

Back at home I expected the power to be gone but all our stuff still had juice. But our internet connection dropped out and our mobile phone coverage was limited to a spot in the back corner of the garden which made things a little awkward.

And this being exacerbated by the fact relatives were trying to call us to see what was happening.

Around midday we were starting to think maybe we should try and find some food, just in case, and we found a shop open just off Milton Road and paid about 5 times as much for a very dodgy looking piece of pumpkin. This profiteering was really appalling and I haven’t been back to that shop.

By the afternoon we went for a wander on foot and on the way home noticed the water had entered our street and had flooded the underneath of the first 4 or 5 houses on the odd side of the road.

FLOOD TV

I should note the TV coverage of this spectacle. You could tell everyone was throwing all their resources at it as there were helicopters in the sky as soon as it got light and they only landed to re-fuel or when it got dark.

Dee was so glued to the TV she developed a slight crush on Karl Stefanovic.

But then there was reports like Suncorp Stadium was on fire, or the entire riverside restaurant had floated away and most incredibly — there was a crocodile in the River. All nonsense.

But there was real, real drama which was utterly gobsmacking to watch: like the Riverwalk breaking-up and the boats smashing into various bridges. Another. And this view where someone is applauding it.

TOURISTS

That Wednesday afternoon at around 4 I went for a quick look to assess where the levels were at. I was riding up a tiny street called Thomas and a car started smashing down towards me giving me no room when it’s side of the road was blocked and therefore it should be giving way to me. I had to stop because it would be dangerous to keep riding as we passed and I was just so pissed off I blocked the car’s path.

I shouted at the driver that he had given me no room which was met by the driver laughing at me like I had no issue. It was then I noticed his car was stuffed with at least 5 people. I instantly realised what these people were up to and I wasn’t feeling too diplomatic.

“Who the fuck are you?” I said. “You know what? You’re just fucking tourists. Now fuck off!”

There was a look in his eye of shock like I had somehow read his mind and all he could stammer was “You’ve lost it”. At that point I rode on.

I was just getting so sick of all the useless traffic up our street. I was also worried about the cat getting hit by a car. And I was just generally over all the noise and the selfishness of people who come from the other side of Brisbane just to gander at misery. I know I was guilty of a little voyeurism, but this was my neighbourhood and a substantial part of these tours was just working out if we would be affected. The only other area I gawked at was the city — and I did it by bike, which is hardly as intrusive as doing so by car.

The 4AM PEAK

Maybe I was also a tiny bit worried about the looming high tide which was due to peak at 4am. We went to sleep exhausted with the drama but at 2:45 I found myself wide awake. So I just jumped out of bed and grabbed my bike and disappeared into the gloom. Dee didn’t even realise I had gone. I headed straight for Haig Road because that would be a good indicator of how high the water was going to get. A woman was already there silently watching the water rise. She pointed at a house and said she lived there and she couldn’t sleep. We both noted it hadn’t got that much higher since this afternoon. I stuck around for about 5 minutes and then headed for the River.

I went up Milton, down Ridley and across the train station overpass. At Chasely Street beside the Wesley Hospital I started riding slowly as there were no street lights or lights of any kind. The road here dips down into Coronation Drive quite excitedly but despite the blackness I could see where the water began. This was new flooding — I hadn’t seen it here the day before. At the edge I looked up and saw that the water here had come from under the road — not across it. There was no way to get to the Drive without jumping a fence into the Wesley carpark and then I was over another fence and dropping my bike from a wall at the road side and hoping I didn’t scratch it. I jumped after it and then I realised how alone I was here.

It was so dark, but not so quiet. The sound of water was incredible. And mixed into that roar was the sound of metal and other flotsam and jetsam randomly banging against eachother.

Down at the Drift Floating Restaurant the sound got even worse. This time it was timber creaking and wincing under the strain of the torrent. Although there had been news reports of the entire restaurant breaking away — it was only a pontoon at the back that had in fact been swept away. But still — the owner had had to smash all the windows to let the water it to try and save his structure. I am not sure it made a difference. Two-years-on the building is still derelict and getting more and more decrepit.

As I rode on towards the city in that scary, scary gloom I saw the water was over the road in four sections: the biggest around the Regatta Hotel and Land street, then a tiny bit at Lang Parade near the floating restaurant, then a bit more at Cribb Street and then another lake at Hale Street. These sections were once natural creeks and you can read all about them on the “Once was a Creek” blog.

When there was not much else to see I headed back the way I had come and talked to the security guard at the train station who was having quite a lonely night protecting the trains that were being warehoused here. Apparently it was because the Bowen hills railyard was in too much danger of flooding — which seems anti-intuitive now I think about it.

It was now raining again, but not very heavily. Next I wanted to see how Toowong was faring, thinking maybe the real danger was from water backing up through drains, but it didn’t seem to be suffering as badly as the predictions warned.

And so I headed home and crashed into bed.

Thursday was another brilliantly sunny day and I went out riding again, this time attempting a trip to new farm to see how some friends were doing. They weren’t home but I got to enjoy all those car-free roads and expressways and this time there weren’t just bikes around, people were walking here too.

Later that day we went down to the Rosalie shops and just near the school some cops told-off a group of five kids for swimming in what was essentially shit. The kids obediently left the water but then followed us over the rise towards the strangler fig. At the fig a news crew was filming and interviewing people. When they saw the kids coming I saw one of them asking the group to jump into the flood water just near the Frew Street drain so they could get some footage. The kids happily obliged. I was shocked and was working up the gall to say something — knowing Dee hates it when I get righteous — but some old ladies beat me to it. They forced the kids out pointing out they could get sucked into the drain and drown.

This is the intersection of Milton Road and Torwood St. You could hear the emergency siren in the distance.

THE AFTERMATH

That night the water disappeared and all that was left was mud.

I got up and grabbed an old broom and headed over to a house in Aldridge Street where friends of friends needed help cleaning up. I arrived early so just volunteered to help at the house next door. Soon I was carting out all sorts of personal items which I was told to chuck. And this just might have included a stash of pornography, but I shouldn’t confirm, nor deny this story.

But then I was expected to trash some important looking papers and I thought I should check with the owner but it turned out he didn’t care. So I heaved them on the increasingly huge pile of shit across the road but it nagged me a bit cause it seemed like he was in a daze — and not really capable of rational thinking. And then deeper into his under-house-tip I also had to lug stuff that looked suspiciously like asbestos sheeting — which thankfully was wet, but still broken and fibrous and I just had to pray it was something benign like plasterboard.

In that vein it should be said that in Torwood Street over-zealous “helpers” had chucked out someone’s perfectly salvageable kitchen while the owner was absent.

An hour or so later, car after car started arriving with people enthusiastically offering help — but we had to turn them away as the area was already choked with volunteers. And one group were distinctly “Aussie” and were already on the turps and concerned they would get breathalysed on the way home. It seemed this was a party to them.

On the way home I noticed an important-looking heavy vehicle was trapped in a side street. So I held up my broom and the cars stopped and the truck could escape. But then I didn’t get a thank-you wave. UGH!

Then I went over to South Brisbane to help another mate at his home on Cordelia St and got to ride in mud at least 3 or 4 inches deep. Crazy.

That afternoon after deciding the shoes I had worn all day weren’t salvageable I went for a lazy ride over to the western freeway bikepath. I did some laps and then on the way home I decided Milton Road was too chaotic so I headed up past the Botanical Gardens thinking I would go home via Birdwood Terrace.

Unbeknownst to me, the police had issued a request to cyclists to avoid the area as the quarry was being used to dump flood clean-up waste. In any case I cruised through and was waved through by a stop/go person and just as I was past the quarry turnoff — without disturbing any trucks I should say — suddenly this TV cameraman from Channel 7 leapt at me from across the road and got right up in my grill filming everything I did like I was famous. I was rattled so I stopped the bike and asked what was going on. The cameraman just said, “Oh, my boss just asked me to film bikes here.”

Then the stop-and-go guy was shouting at me that I was blocking the road — which I wasn’t — and so I turned around and headed home the shitty way, not really sure what had just happened. At home I realised that the news was going to attempt to pillory cyclists again and this time it was going to be me as their poster-boy of nastiness.

Great.

Thankfully there was nothing on the news about me, but that’s the power of the media. I was just finding a safe route home yet they could paint me as some kind of demon. And I later thought, “Why didn’t I just show him the address on my ID?” Or point out all the caked-on mud all over me. UGH.

All that “flood-hero” nonsense really annoyed me. People were just doing their duty, but many it seemed walked around like getting a broom out made them superior.

The Hills (of Brisbane)

Somehow I got this idea of visiting all the suburbs in Brisbane with “Hill” or “Mountain” in their title. And then I worked out a route with the least amount of backtracking (see below) and texted all my mates begging them to come and suddenly it was today and it we were actually doing it.

“How good is this?” I kept saying. Each and every time it was met with a deathly silence which I took to mean everyone was intently pondering this historic occasion.

But I was hopelessly excited and it just gushed out. Anyway — the tally for the day was:

Highgate Hill, Weller’s Hill, Mt Gravatt, White’s Hill, Camp Hill, Seven Hills, Cannon Hill, Bowen Hills, Spring Hill, Red Hill, Everton Hills, Arana Hills, Ferny Hills, A point on Mt Nebo Road that is the highest point in the city of Brisbane, Kenmore Hills, Chapel Hill, and finally Mt Coot-tha.

For me 116kms and over 2000ms of climbing. Here’s the pics:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOM!

Mt Gravatt

White’s Hill

Scotty was feeling a bit poorly today. And so I made sure to remind him at every opportunity, “HOW GOOD IS THIS?” He just gumbled.

Spring Hill/Bowen Hills

Red Hill

Gooby self-portrait. I stood on my sunglasses the other day and they got a bit bent. Ugh.

Scott, Tom and Shirts were all so excited they had to have a break while Ben and me went further up the road to this point – the highest bit of road in Brisbane. HOW GOOD IS THAT? 

Then we went over Gap Creek Road and I could feel my legs getting a bit leaden and I got this vibe that the spirits of the group were not quite overflowing with excitement as they had been previously. In fact I think someone looked at me like they were going to throttle me the next time I said, “HOW GOOD IS THIS?” So it was decided that we would omit Mt Crosby and Mt Ommaney. But I think the guys saw me looking a bit teary so agreed, begrudgingly to indulge me and finish on Mt Coot-tha. YAY!

There was some charity ride on the mountain today. Apparently this group was doing laps in some 24 hour thing.

PLANETARIUM (and STORM) DAYS!

I bet you didn’t know that Brisbane is the only (major) city in the world named after an astronomer. Maybe you did already, so good on you. But personally I was pretty excited by this revelation.

I first discovered Brisbane was named after an actual person — Sir Thomas Brisbane — when my year 10 history teacher (Mr Hannon) made us memorise the first ten Governors of NSW, and New South Wales almost equated to the whole of white-occupied Australia in those days. To this day I can roll them off without even thinking:

Phillip, Hunter, King, Bligh, Macquarie, Brisbane, Darling, Bourke, Gipps, Fitzroy.

So Mr Hannon, who is still teaching at Sydney Boy’s High, made us get into groups of three and assigned each group one of those ten Governors and told us to spruke his exploits to a class presentation, and then do our best to denegrate all the other 9 governors — no holds barred. He even encouraged gutter tactics, epic sensationalism and Today Tonight style journalism, (though of course TT didn’t exist back then).

It was an exceedingly inspired display of educating. And to this day if anyone asks me who my favourite teacher is — it would be Tony Hannon.

Anyway, today we had a date with Sir Thomas and the Planetarium named after him. This little Brisbane treasure is located in the botanic gardens near Mt Coot-tha and the last time I had been here was back when I was maybe 5ish. And I LOVED it then but never really thought to go back until today. And our other date was Tegan who had just finished her exams and is moving house and needed some celebrations! Yes. We arrived just as it was about to storm — again! It has been an epic weekend of precipitation and atmospheric drama.

The garden got a bit more chewed up than usual yesterday and last night, after another epic slow-storm rolled over, we lost power for a few hours — the first time we’ve experienced here.

The cat has been a bit mental but not as bad as I have seen her when she has been trapped by Queensland’s summer wet-weather.

And just now another big storm is bearing down upon us.

But, back to today.

The Planetarium is a big round building and we all know round buildings are cool – right?

All along the curved outer shell is a gallery of cosmic wonders.

Some — like the view of “Brisbane From Space” are not quite worthy of being displayed so prominently — now that Google is around. LOL.

Meanwhile outside it all got nasty and rainy.

This is the view through the porthole windows. I remember these windows from my visit as a kid. I also remember they obviously didn’t have modern projectors back in that day. Instead they had this weird contraption in the centre of the room that looked so freakishly sci-fi.

In fact you can see it in the background of the picture below. I expect the display back then was no where near as impressive as today — but I still miss that bad guy spinning away in the centre of the room.

The amazing trippy roof design!

So the actual show — we saw “Cosmic Collisions” narrated by Robert Redford — was fucking amazing. Like I got a few tears in my eyes thinking about how epic it was. It was really, really cool and seeing it on the massive ceiling and having to look around all the time just like you would in real life. Dee and I even banged heads at one stage looking at random views on the edge. LOL.

Then after a cool demonstration of our Brisbane celestiality (I made that word up) where a very nice presenter talked us through what we would see at night time if we looked up, we emerged to clear skies and epic, intense sunshine. BIZARRE!

So then we settled down for Mexican and booze.

But then another storm came.

Dee made me put the car under the house as hail was due. And literally 2 minutes later the maelstrom hit. We’ve never had hail here.

HAIL PICTURES:

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BONUS PICS (SATURDAY)

The cat suddenly decided the floor tom was a good place to sleep. She’s never, ever slept here before.

Then it got sunny again and she was here.

This is late last night (Saturday) and so we sat on the deck and brought out a mat for the cat. It was nice.

My history of Ric’s (Part 3)

This is me at the Rev in 2006 by Justin Edwards. I felt I should buy this photo after all the trouble Justin went to to photograph a deadshit like me. And then I gave the print to my mum for Christmas — like I was channeling Kanye.

PART ONE | PART TWO

2006 was a big, fat, mad year for me — perhaps the biggest, fattest, maddest year ever. If my life was rendered a statistical plane by activity and life-changing awesomeness, 2006 represented an incredible spike. It was such an anomaly that a good statistician just might need to dismiss it lest it grotesquely distort the holistic reality. But it was a beautiful and amazing anomaly. It was so hectic and head-spinningly profound I actually went to work to enjoy some recovery and structure and normality.

But initially, 2006 was the year I was officially getting old and boring, and late in 2005 my band (specialbranch) had folded and I found myself suddenly just plodding along, playing indoor netball two nights a week, turning up to work early and never, ever exceeding my self-imposed drinking limit.

SINGLE

And it was this brand new year that I found myself quite single for the first time in my life. Being a wandering soul felt very, very alien to someone whose relationships for the last decade had blended together like I’d feathered them in Photoshop. There was no cheating, but no real gaps either. But now I decided I didn’t need to rush anything and really enjoyed coming home to an empty house with just my cat for company — eating egg sandwiches three nights a week and trying my best not to be afraid of the dark.

Me telling a story at Ric’s

RETIREMENT

So because my band stuff was all supposedly wound up I had started innocently just contemplating retiring from music and slowly descending into a respectable old age where I envisaged I would die reading a book in a big leather reading chair, wearing a tweed jacket (with elbow patches), surrounded by a massive floor-to-ceiling-library. Perhaps even smoking a pipe. A bit like this:

I was definitely not very interested in resuming a career in rock n roll. There’d been so many disappointments, so much disillusionment. But as it turned out, after that call from Wintah, I didn’t just resume a career in rock n roll — I dived into it’s big stupid intoxicating pool with gay abandon giving this rock n roll crusade every chance to redeem itself.

THE YEAR I GAVE EVERYTHING TO ROCK N ROLL

And although my first show with the Little Lovers was in front of a massive crowd on the main street of Stanthorpe during the apple/grape festival (which was marked in history as the year the pub ran out of rum before it got dark) my first real gig was at Ric’s just a week later.

And Ric’s became the stage for all this nonsense of 2006. I found myself there almost every single Friday and Saturday night and often other nights as well.

CHRIS (from Dollar Bar) — and just saying his mention of Wolf Like Me was just a beautiful coincidence as he hadn’t seen part two of this blog.)

I DJ’d at Ric’s from what was I think about a five year period sometime in the 2000s. I really can’t be more accurate than that, mostly because this is the time where I learnt how to properly drink alcohol. For at least a one year period I was DJing three nights a week while holding down a 9-5 office job. This was challenging and necessitated some kind of hangover management plan, which my buddy the bar manager Ajaye instilled in me. My most regular spot was downstairs on Saturday nights, midnight to five am. Upstairs was considered more glamorous and like, proper DJs, but downstairs was the front line and I loved it. This would then usually involve a new session that would begin at 5am and go through till the early afternoon. So much drinking. I got paid pretty well but invested all the money back into Ric’s and various other bars.

These are some sporadic, half memories. If they’re not true, it’s how I remember it and that’s the same thing really.

– A girl who DJd at The Empire came up to me and said “I get paid twice as much as you and would get fired if I played a song that was six months old.” She was annoying me because The Empire had closed early because there was no one there. I asked her to come back to my place after closing, she declined.

– A girl with a group of friends from Townsville requested “Kickstart My Heart” by Faith No More. When I said that no such song existed unless it was a crime against nature cover that I hadn’t heard, she told me that she was a doctor from Townsville and I was a piece of shit who didn’t deserve to live, let alone be a DJ. I got her and her friends kicked out because I could do that.

– I got hit on so many times by girls way out of my league, just because I was DJing there. Fifteen years of playing in bands did not even come close to the attention I would get from one night. Nothing ever came of any of it.

– Cigarette break songs. Wolf Like Me* by TV On The Radio. Fool’s Gold by the Stone Roses. Blue Monday by New Order. Atlas by Battles.

– Finishing the set always with Don’t Stop Believing by Journey.

– Trying to play Galaga at 5am without being able to see the screen.

– Sending people text messages that went something like ‘blghfs sjahe dhkaikye’

– The night the band Against Me! were breakdancing to Run DMC.

– The night Patrick Wolf didn’t get let in because he was wearing (hot pink) shorts.

Even living in Melbourne and Sydney, I often see regulars at various events and gigs. There’s sometimes an awkward glance of recognition, but if I can see them struggling to place me in their memories I let it go. I’m sure their memories are very different to mine, and that’s the way it should be. I regularly see some of the staff from those days and there’s a sense that we were all part of a secret society that no longer exists. Without exception they were amazing people. I do miss those days and look back fondly on them, but I am also very grateful they are OVER.

TREVOR (from the Lookalikes, Gentle Ben, Small Fantasy, The Melniks and Biro et al)

My favourite memory is the Cheeseboard. It was crazy how supportive Steve was of Skippy. We got to play every weekend for about a year with a guaranteed wage no matter how many people showed up and got to store our gear there as well. Even Polydor got on board and gave us CDs to give away every week (we kept the ones we liked).

The other thing about Ric’s that was great was walking in and getting a smile and a beer plonked down on the table before you even had a chance to sit down. Boy, I sure miss that in Melbourne.

And Nick Naughton (drummer in almost all of the bands associated with Trevor above – and more) was the commissar of the Cheeseboard and also a DJ and employee of Ric’s. (More on that in the next blog).

LITTLE LOVERS

So the “Little Lovers” was fronted by Wintah Thompson who I’d known for years as the kid-son of the drummer of my favourite Brisbane band. But now Wintah wasn’t the dorky kid I’d known before and he was all grown up (but just quietly – still quite dorky) and in a band of his own with another delightful fellow (and awesome drummer) called Ben Whittaker.

So my first real show with this new band was at Ric’s and a big bunch of my friends came along to and it was amazing. Even though I fucked up my lines occasionally I got cheers and woo-hoos. Amazing. Below is a shot from Stanthorpe.

ART

Our artist friend and fan Verity then had her collection displayed on the walls of Ric’s and she had done a portrait of our band and it was displayed in the main room — directly in front of the stage. And as amazing as that was, it was still a bit surreal. I embraced it. That week if I was dancing or talking with someone I would point it out and it was incredibly funny — and in saying that I am not at all trying to belittle Verity’s awesome work. It didn’t sell, but I imagine that had more to do with the subject matter rather than the talent on display. (Later Verity made us a video).

THE “NEW GUY”

And as the latest in a whole string of Little Lover bassplayers I needed to maintain some control at shows. And thus I was often the designated driver. But I would have a beer on stage in some pathetic pretence that I was perpetually “rock n roll”. But after the show I would hurriedly pack up our shit – roll it through the hordes at Ric’s (over and over) to the carpark out the back with a bit too much deliberate intensity.

Then I’d load up the car tetris-style or just in a “shove it in whatever” fashion and then leadfoot all this schlepping back to my home in Windsor as quickly as possible. Then I’d jump out of the car, dump all the expensive stuff into the living room while calling a cab at the same time. I then had precisely 30 seconds to smash a beer from the fridge and chuck the can onto the lawn and then dive into the cab which would ferry me back to Ric’s for the after-party. There I would find Wintah already stumbling around and so I would just smash beer after beer in an effort to catch up. Many of those nights ended in some degree of chaos.

Photo by Verity

STAFF

Apart from that person mentioned below (who had mercifully left by 2006) I really got to know and love the staff at Ric’s — even “door-bitch” (not my label) Raychel. Raychel and I had a tough time getting to understand eachother as someone in my former band had a few conflicts with her — but during those old dramas I was almost oblivious to that stuff — so eventually we got to enjoy some peace between us. (To her credit she was fiercely loyal to Ric’s). There was the wolf-man Andre and Lara, and AJ and the morbidly depressing DJ Ema — I think she was known as “Penny Lame”. Of all the Ric’s staff she was the toughest to get a laugh out of, even a smile, but she played the best tunes. Plus “Strictly” Rachael Johnston who was our confidant and helped us out with shows and was generally someone we could always rely on. I remember ringing her in a panic when a disastrous battle loomed with a multi-national company and she provided me with awesome counsel. Thanks Strix.

A NOTE ABOUT STEVE

I just wanna say that Steve was the owner of Ric’s during the absolute period I have discussed in these blogs — that involved me — and he is due a hearty rock n roll handshake for establishing and maintaining this place. He deserves all the credit for how much I loved this place. He also loved my band and gave us gigs and was a genuine fan of his venue and cultivating the scene. He was always there and stuff but I never said hello cause I was a useless, snotty, dipshit who got a bit weak at the knees when confronted with authority. Sorry Steve. I wanted to interview him for this blog but had no way of contacting him. And it seems he is writing a book due for release soon which no doubt — will be amazing. I look forward to that and I will keep you all informed.

Thanks Steve for this photo

DRAMA

1) Once I broke my bass on stage (by dropping it on it’s lead) during our pretend cowboy “fight” and Luke from Violent Soho ran off and fetched me his bass from another venue on the other side of the Valley. And only then could we complete our set. What a fucking legend. We barely knew eachother in those days but he stood up and helped us out.

2) This may seem bizarre but the only time I have hooked up with someone random was at Ric’s. It turned out we had a whole bunch of friends in common — but that’s Brisbane.

3) I met Dee, my partner of 6 years at Ric’s. And many, many of my friends have met their life-partners here too. But in saying that — there were still awkward times when Dee and I would venture out to Ric’s. I remember Dee said to me once, “Well, how many ex-girlfriends are we going to run into tonight?” And I think that night we bumped into four. But of course we were all friends and only a little bit awkward around eachother.

4) Wintah was the first person I knew to get a taste of that taxi-queue-rage. He got beat up early in 2006 for nothing really.

5) SIXFTHICK. This band’s gig’s at Ric’s I can only describe as a revelation. And the shit they got away with in the name of ART makes what happened to Del Toro below a bit ridiculous. So Ben Corbett and his brother would get topless and self-violent and consequently bloody and be climbing all over the furniture and on top of the bar and at points be up on the tables in front of the stage. It was purposely confronting and ROCK and whatever they wanted to get away with. But in saying all that, the story below needs to be told.

Not sure who took this

BONUS POSTSCRIPT: “THAT DEL TORO GIG”

Back-tracking a bit I want to tell you about something that happened in 2005 which kinda scared me and made Ric’s less like a home and more like something everyone needed to take more seriously. Ric’s had been such a safe and neutral venue but then this: I wasn’t there but knew about it instantly from various sources and this is what I am reliably told happened: Xavier (a laid-back and genuinely relaxed dude), the drummer for a few local bands including Eat Laser Scumbag, the Fancy Boys and Extra Foxx got a bit excited and started dancing quite ridiculously on stage while his mates in Del Toro played their set. Admittedly it wasn’t quite dancing, more theatrics but it was all a bit of drunken fun. But this bartender, whose name I forget — but I don’t forget how fucking surly and uptight he was — decided to wrestle him down in a headlock and then pin him to the ground with his arm behind his back for ages. Meanwhile the band tried to say it was cool and they didn’t mind but it was no use. Xavier was eventually kicked out anyway and “banned”.

Extra Foxx, of which Xavier was drumming in, had a gig the very next week at Rics. But Xavier was apparently barred from Rics and Adam, the bassplayer, pulled out in solidarity. So when Jess (the keyboardist in my band Specialbranch) told me that Saturday morning that Conwae (the only constant in Extra Foxx) was about to play the gig all by himself (something he wasn’t used to at the time) I volunteered to play drums — my very first public drumming performance — and with only one short rehearsal. And with Jess on bass, Roly and Dale on guitars, we got through the show and it was pretty cool.

And we had Xavier’s blessing — otherwise we wouldn’t have done it. And indeed Xavier was there to see us play, and Adam too, because the “bans” Rics imposed were often never enforced and indeed forgotten literally the moment after they were executed. Weird.

 

More from my 2005/6 “Rock is a Vicious Beast…” zine

In posting this I want to say this was well BEFORE Tym’s Guitars opened up an actual shop.

Pictures and little tales

This week I feel like I am in Twin Peaks being stalked by one armed men.

See on friday the new washing machine was delivered and front-loading washing machines are fucking heavy and our driveway is seriously steep and the dude arrived with the trolley and the box already on it and made it down the driveway and up this big step and into the laundry not needing any help from me. And we were chatting about the “transit bolts”* and stuff and it was then I noticed he was missing a big chunk of his left arm — namely anything halfway down the forearm. Like a total fucking fool I suddenly couldn’t finish the sentence I was saying and I am lucky I didn’t fall over in amazement.

And then last night at the omnium I was resoundingly hammered by that incredible youngster who has almost the same condition.

My mum says everything happens in threes so I am waiting for Mike to show up.

But Mike’s cool. He can visit anytime.

And so I googled and managed to contact Cernak (and with a name like that it wasn’t hard!) and she was happy to hear from me and told me where the view her picture was based on was located. The picture below was taken at street level where the image was drawn from the view from the Hanlon building across the road which is a lot higher.

And above is the Hanlon Building where Cernak lived back in the 70s.

Being stupid-arty on the Bicentennial bikeway

And today I met Tom for a short ride up Coot-tha and then over to Mt Gravatt.

The view from Mt Gravatt is a little hindered by trees, but I think it is actually better than Coot-tha — maybe just cause you can see Mt Coot-tha and it’s dreamy TV towers — something I have loved ever since I was a kid. (Cause TV was like magic to a 6 year old and those towers were like totems to that magic).

On the way home my route got blocked by some street market.

And then I got to the Baroona Road shops and pulled apart my saddle bag to get at my emergency $10 and bought fish n chips for lunch. YUM. And so I took a self-portrait while I waited just to celebrate.

* See I only know about transit bolts because I learnt about them the HARD WAY. That story involved But naturally I didn’t mention that to him and pretended I was just super-streetwise when it came to washing machines.

BONUS PICS:

This is what happens when you do not remove the transit bolts. The machine starts acting like it’s having an epileptic fit. Above Dee is trying her best to stop it shaking.

And this is Moochey — my old cat (RIP) — getting a bit weirded out by the new appliance. Also of note is that OLD WASHING MACHINE with its very checkered history.

Bridges Alleycat Report (and Crabon Fail)

It’s been a feast of alleycats of late and the latest was Bridges of Brisbane 3.

The idea here was to visit 8 of Brisbane’s bridges choosing your own route and the order and noting down some clue at a specific spot or doing some activity with the checkpoint person at the 3 bridges that had someone there to greet you.

There was only really two choices about the order — clockwise or counter-clockwise.

Upon some discussion with Scott and Shirts about the fact the Story Bridge checkpoint was on the footpath on the eastern side I changed my original plan and decided to go counter-clockwise.

But as it turns out that was all moot as I DNF‘d. But more on that later.

It was a simultaneous mass-start and I smashed off with what seemed like two-thirds of the 20ish participants and got a decent run all the way to the ‘Swamp Bridge’ at Stones Corner to find it without its appointed caretaker. It seems Marty had got a bit excited and went past this bridge to take up a lonely position on a different bridge 1km further down the road. LOL.

So the 8 or so of us in this bewildered daze eventually just decided to push on. On O’Keefe Street Shirts and Scott went straight ahead (they’d worked out a shortcut) while I led everyone else along the bikepath. They put at least 30 seconds on us with this little trick which Shirts told me later he had thoroughly researched including investigating elevation differences.

Meanwhile I felt my saddle behaving oddly. It seemed I was slipping forward but I dismissed it as just the fact I had knicks under my shorts. At the other side of the Eleanor Schonell Bridge Shirts was already caning it back towards the city with Scott just behind. Kristine gave us all a peg (which I attached to a brake-lever) and we pressed on.

It was just Jordy, me and Red at the top of Annerley Road and I told everyone to grab my wheel cause with gears I could be better use to the group on this downhill. And on the Goodwill Bridge I jumped off the bike to find the clue we had to note down and it was then I felt my saddle was actually bending. Not good. Instantly I knew it was too dangerous to continue racing so the others rode off and I wondered what to do. The saddle was cracked in several places but seemed like it was stable enough to make it back to Dan and Kath’s at the start/finish.

But it was hard to go from “race-face” to a boy with a broken bike limping home — especially when everyone else was out there having so much fun — so I decided to go to the Story Bridge checkpoint and wait for Shirts. So I rolled off via the Kangaroo Point cliffs and waited about 5 or 6 minutes and then followed him back from there. I smashed out of the saddle almost the whole way but it hurt so much trying to rest your legs just standing on the pedals. OW. We both got a great run and negotiated the final tricky bit — getting across Shafston Road (which has this huge traffic island in the middle) — with the help of a green light and no traffic on the wrong side of the road (which we took for 2 blocks).

Shirts got a time of around 35 minutes — which I think was quicker than the time Declan did when he won the first Bridge Battle when there was only 6 bridges to visit.

Red, who came second, told us later he had run across 6 lanes of road at the northern end of the Story Bridge amidst honking and general craziness. I would have killed to see this!

Naturally I got rather wasted at the end and was rolling around the ground at several points in fits of laughter and at one point jumped over the fire attempting to do a heal-click as I did so. I was informed later that lycra is highly flammable and that possibly wasn’t a great idea. “Ok,” I said.

Of note when I attempted said “over-the-fire-heel-click” I actually missed my left heel and instead took a big chunk of skin out of my ankle — which was only noticeable when it started hurting like a motherfucker when I got home and into bed. Oh Davey, when will you learn?

So sorry about the poor quality of the photos. The little camera isn’t that great at low-light shots and plus I got a bit too fascinated by the fire in the state I was in.

Checkpoint Marty!

This is BEFORE and below is AFTER:

Non-bike-related photos from the past 7 days

My mum and her partner John are visiting from Melbourne at the moment. So mum bought some presents and one of which was this hand-drawn picture by an artist called Wendy Cernac (one of mum’s friends at the time) from … Continue reading →

Pictures from the first week of May

Boggo Road Jail

On Tuesday I went to the new EcoSciences building at Boggo Road for work. I was pretty amazed by the building there. It’s got this central atrium and there’s plenty of wood and stainless steel and architectural motifs treated in a seemingly modern-homage to traditional Queensland housing architecture of the early 20th Century. I found out later via Security that I wasn’t supposed to be taking pictures inside a government building – so the picture above is a tiny bit naughty.

Later that day I took this picture. This was a Communities Department solidarity action against the prospect of cutting the jobs of temporary workers in the Queensland Public Service. And it was such a great turn out. We were hoping for 50 people and we got so many more. They just kept coming and I was in charge of taking the photo and I realised I just wasn’t going to be able to get them all in. So I was taking photos with my arms above my head but that was useless. And then I noticed some blokes up the back of the park doing some work and they had a ladder there. And I kinda just called one of my female colleagues over – who was just the closest, and just quite accidentally — a total babe. And I asked her to run up and ask them if we could borrow the ladder. Just quietly. My logic was I needed to be there to take the photo just in case the speeches ended suddenly and plus, she would have had a much, much better chance in gaining their approval.

Anyway – a long story short, she got their permission (though they said if we got hurt they would say we stole it – LOL) and I got the crowd to wait a moment while someone ran and got it. It was like a pregnant pause and as I tentatively climbed up (have I told you I am not very good with heights?) the crowd was pumped and I got this awesome photo and they gave the tradies the most generous applause when it was suggested we thank them for the ladder.

It was a big day Tuesday. My next assignment was to take a photo in the middle building of the three towards the left of the photo above. After I had finished my work there I was told I could go to the 25th floor if I wanted to see the view. I didn’t need any more encouragement and so the 4 photos below are what I took in the fading light of that day.

In the photo above you can actually see where I work.

The cat has been so chummy of late. She has slept in our bed, taking up a little more bed-real-estate than she should, every night since she was allowed outside un-supervised. I woke sometime this morning and turned on the lamp and took this snap. Note the time on the clock.

This is GOMA. As I was saying before I genuinely like the architecture of Brisbane’s newer buildings which echo our suburban homes from 100 years ago. It’s almost like a bigger version of where our humble Auchenflower home. I also like how there is a plane in this photo. Anyone, including professional photographers, will tell you if you take a photo and there’s sky in the photo, having a plane there just makes it all about 50 times better.

After my ride today – only 55kms – I felt pretty sore and started to worry that 200k ride had damaged my legs too much to recover in time for next weekend. But I tend to worry. In saying that I put on my compression tights – which aid blood flow and apparently speed up recovery. Dee kept singing “Under Compression” like she was singing “Under Pressure” every time she saw me.

Weird, prehistoric-looking flowers I have never seen before have popped up in the front yard. I like them! (Mostly cause they are red).

VINCENT STREET 2011/2012

Today I thought I’d take a few “After the floods” photos. Apologies for the poor (small) quality of the older photos, I lost the full versions when I lost my camera in London. (another story)

BICENTENNIAL BIKEPATH 2011/2012

HAIG ROAD (Near Annie and Beard Streets) 2011/2012

OUTSIDE MILTON STATE SCHOOL 2011/2012

ROSALIE VILLAGE 2011/2012

The week in photos

The Victoria bridge, Brisbane’s first river crossing and me being arty. This bridge walk (I believe) has the greatest propensity for vomit stains. I imagine this is because people at the Treasury Casino get a bit too toasty late in the evening and end up here. Someone should write a vomit-opera about it.

I am normally quite hostile to the forced art-project facades that Council dictates on new buildings in the city. They are usually horribly tragic and so very obviously “Public Art”. But I like this one on the new Wintergarden project. Give credit where credit is due is what I say.

The confluence of Queen and Albert Streets. “THE” meeting point for generations of Brisbane people. Just outside Hungry Jacks. How many hours I have spent here waiting for friends – I do not know. Countless.

My 2009 collage is in the frame above – partially the face of this blog, and something I needed to do. It’s basically a picture (or motif) of everything and anything I love and have loved over my entire life. It is a history. My history. Just like a book can be a history or a timeline or a whole volume of words. It is a snapshot of history but ART at the same time. I have decided I will do one every 5 years and see how things change. Just like a FIVE YEAR PLAN.

My tar-stained legs. I was so freakishly stained and dirty I just needed to document it with photos. EPIC. I still have that tar on my legs. Not sure how I will get it off.

Today I noticed the tar had seared itself on my bike’s tyres too. WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?

On Anzac Day, Zoe (6 years old) and her friends had a street stall next door. I bought this bad boy. The cat hated it – but in a good way – she just instantly attacked it. It kept her amused for a bit.

Cleaning and greasing the bike after the 9 hour bullshit it suffered yesterday. The chain was already rusty. As you could see from the photo before – I had to scratch off TAR as well as dirt and other detritus.

Today I walked up the road and took a photo from almost the top of the street – there was another 20 metres of climbing behind me but I couldn’t be bothered! The view is even more dramatic at night. The kids do street parties here when there is firework displays in the city.

AND THE OTHER BIG NEWS TODAY- the cat got freed. Dee and I had negotiated and decided today was appropriate. The cat woke me up at 6 am and I knew that was too early and I fed her and went back to bed. Then at 7:30 she started walking over my head. Literally. I am used to this. And she was purring all the while like she was on drugs and somehow doing me a favour. I then groggily got out of bed and opened her cat window for the first time in 6 weeks. She almost reluctantly walked outside and spent some time on the deck just wondering if this freedom was real. I watched her from the windows inside for about 5 minutes. When she decided to disappear from view in leaving the front yard to go next door) I almost immediately heard a kid’s voice exclaiming “SASHA!!” I was so proud she was amongst friends and free once more.

Although the cat spent all day in freedom – she came home at various points. The above picture was at about 6pm. And I know many of you won’t believe this…and I still don’t believe it. But at about 12pm I heard her jingle outside and I opened the front door to say hello and I found her INSIDE her special cat gulag:

The picture above is just descriptive. The gulag was on the deck, but there she was. It was like she had Stockholm Syndrome. For all these weeks we had shoved her in there to give her some safe outside time and she seemed to tolerate it – and very rarely she seemed to be OK with the experience. Cat’s rarely show their true feelings. So it turns out she might have actually liked it. BIZARRE.

“LET ME OUT!”

We have a moth in the laundry that seems to live there now. She has a crazy-awesome disguise. I am totally fooled.