A mere half an hour after I’d blogged my potentially offensive summary of Brisbane’s shortfallings, I had a phone-call inviting me for an interview at the English school I’ve been training at. I saw it as a sign. Having all but booked my ticket out of Brisbane, I felt a truthful account – warts n’ all – of the place would be the right thing to post. But I was rushed and even as I pressed ‘publish’, I knew I’d probably not seen some of the more positive aspects of Brisbane and secretly hoped no Brisbanites would alight upon the blog and feel offended. And so the job interview was a wake-up call to look properly at what is around and pull out the positives.
Today, I had the interview…with some success (another story) and have the day to explore the city and focus on some of the more positive aspects of the place. Almost before consciously beginning this task, I looked up whilst waiting to cross the road at one of the busy inner-city junctions and saw a statue of a koala mum and her young – the building, quite aptly, named ‘Koala House’. I’d just last night watched a documentary about the survival adaptations of koalas living on the outskirts of Brisbane’s suburbs. Last Friday, I saw and stroked my first koala of Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo. I like koalas. The statue made me smile.
Moving on to the Queen Street Mall area, despite a host of overpriced clothes shops and grim-looking fast food chains, the reception at the shops I browsed was none other than first class. Bright, positive, upbeat and doing a very good impression of actually being interested in whether or not the potential customer is having a good day. What’s more, outside the mall, the street is lined with musicians: a oboe player slumped moodily in a exit door alcove, eyes closed and melody soaring; an accordion player looking much like the sea-shanty singers of a good old English seaside shindig: full white beard and colourful waistcoat and an ukulele-player: crisp sound bubbling onto the city streets.
I’ve now taken a seat at the river-side bar/coffee shop, attempting to find some solace in this river in the way I do with my river at home. The sun is sporadically shining, interspersed with a welcome breeze; CityCat ferries glide past, some stopping to unload passengers; passers-by seem relaxed, content, not friendly but certainly not hostile.
So between the koala statue, the musicians, the friendly shop-service and the pleasant river setting, I’m doing my best to pull out the positives of this ‘soft city’. Now, I just need to decide whether to stay here or move on.
bandanarambler 