By Imogen Sabey
Hello, Queenslanders! Here is a review of your beloved city based on the impression I have gathered from being here for *checks watch* 22 hours. I am from Sydney, where the city is big and the egos are bigger. Naturally, with my abundance of opinions and my nepotistic connections to the Glass editorial team, I have hijacked the Glass office to write this deeply uninformed op-ed for your reading pleasure.
When I told my friends, family & colleagues that I was travelling to Brisbane, most of them said “why?” with more bemusement than curiosity. Brisbane doesn’t loom large in our national imagination, and before deciding to come here I would have had extreme difficulty naming any of its sites, tourist attractions, or major destinations. Now I would say… GOMA?
From the moment I landed in Brisbane Airport, I was intrigued by the city’s charms. I came via Air Train to Roma St, which seems to be the de facto central station whilst being next to Central Station. It was a dusky 21 degrees, which was barely two degrees warmer than Sydney and yet, spiritually, I felt like I was in the tropics. On the train I remarked on the picturesque graffitied brick buildings and the broad horizon of residential suburbs and trees. Central Station did not look big, and I wouldn’t have realised it was important if not for the train announcement.
Once I arrived in the city and dropped my luggage off, I immediately took off to explore my surroundings. Firstly, I noticed that the air quality in the CBD was better than it is in ours. The sidewalks are wide and plentiful, the traffic seems like it’d be intense if the streets weren’t four or more lanes wide, and there are a lot of shops—particularly Japanese. I grabbed some sushi on my way because it was the first shop I saw, and then I walked past a dozen more Japanese shops on the same block.
My next stop was the Botanic Gardens. I stumbled across the QUT Gardens Point campus on the way, which was remarkably scenic, and diverted to the Old Government House, which was interesting, albeit mostly empty. We tend to have more furniture in our historical monuments, but hey, I can appreciate the beauty of a wall.
Riley, the Glass editor-in-chief, has just commented that I am writing very fast. Being the former editor of the nation’s largest student newspaper I feel I ought to note that I’ve only been writing for about fifteen minutes, largely because Alex, another editor, dared me to write something and didn’t think I’d take him up. Oh, sidenote here: the Glass office is excellent. Way better than most student media offices in the country, and I have visited a statistically improbable number of them. The distance from here to the offices of the resident student politicians is particularly satisfying. I enjoy a hefty distance between myself and all student politicians, as a rule of thumb. But I shall get back to QUT later.
So, at this point in my journey I was in the Botanic Gardens, and I was deeply satisfied to see some variegated tropical plants. Brisbane isn’t technically tropical, but I associate the entirety of Queensland with tropical foliage, so that was gratifying. The lack of ibises was also quite nice; the only ibises I’ve encountered so far I didn’t even see, because they seemed to be all gathered at the top of a very tall copse of bamboo trees, so I could only hear them squawking. There did seem to be lots of young lads getting around on e-scooters. I’ve never used an e-scooter but woah, there are a lot of them here. I think I’ve seen more e-scooters in a day than I have in the past year in Sydney.
I have just spilled some Sprite in the Glass office. Whoopsie. There’s a literal ton of Sprite downstairs, so it was bound to happen. Editors note: this is how I’m finding out about this—what the hell!
Once I had explored the Botanic Gardens, I speed-walked over to Fortitude Valley, which I had heard at some point was Brisbane’s Chinatown. There were a lot of Nepalese restaurants, so I will probably come back for some momos later. While I walked, I admired the view of the Brisbane River. It seems like a missed opportunity to just call it the Brisbane River. There’s the Yarra, Torrens, Parramatta River, and the Brisbane River. Why not the Meanjin River? That would be more inspiring. There doesn’t seem to be much to see on the southern side of the river, although Southbank looks pretty interesting, and everyone I’ve spoken to has said good things about GOMA, so I have high expectations for that.
I got the Kitty Cat ferry, which seems like an odd name for a ferry. I thought I’d misread it. There also seems to be a City Cat. Why is there a City Cat and a Kitty Cat? Was that intentional? I hope so. I will rate the Kitty Cat 10/10. The staff were great and explained everything to everyone. I got on at Howard something Wharves, which was a very pretty area and had a very large nice-looking bar that I shan’t name for discretionary purposes, which I’ve since been informed has a very poor reputation amongst Brisbane locals for the flavour quality of their beer. I’ve never had a beer, but Queensland feels like a good place to start.
Thus marks the end of my first day in Brisbane. I’ve spent most of today in the Glass office, but I have lots of opinions about the QUT campus and Alex has only just imposed a word count limit on me after realising with some alarm that I was already up to a thousand words. The walk from the city to Kelvin Grove is rubbish. I had to go past a bunch of highways, there were no pedestrians, and if I had taken the bus it would’ve saved about five minutes.
The campus itself is massive. QUT has done several things well: it has great student media, it funded Meanjin when the University of Melbourne dropped it, and it gave me a (probably inaccurate) impression of Brisbane as a woke city. The 7/11 here is approaching Japanese standards. The abundance of natural light in the Glass office is much appreciated. I am getting hungry. Alex has suggested that I end this article (quickly, so he has less to edit) with “I’m going to go see what your city has to offer for lunch and if I don’t like it I’m going to firebomb it”. I won’t firebomb it, because I’m great like that, but I might hijack the Glass office again tomorrow to share more unsolicited opinions.
Imogen Sabey is a former editor for Honi Soit, and current president of the Student Media Association.
