Mister Brisbane: Fireworks fizzle
Brisbane Festival | Forgotten burbs| Covid caution | Sweet treats
As well as having an excellent program, the Brisbane Festival this year will be adhering to strict Covid-safe protocols, including the advice that people not attend events if they are feeling unwell. For the sake of the organisers, the artists involved and the city itself, I hope that it’s a huge success. One thing the festival won’t have is fireworks, as the annual River Fire event will be replaced with a laser show. However, there will be fireworks at the Brisbane Showgrounds on Thursday, August 6. The people who can’t see them from home are being encouraged to watch them on TV. Now, I know fireworks are popular but, surely, if you’ve seen one display, you’ve seen them all. Also, watching them on television is a little weird. It’s all over in 20 minutes and all you’ve done is created air pollution and blown tens of thousands of dollars that could’ve been spent elsewhere. In fact, seeing a pile of money set of fire might be more entertaining.
P.S. Here is a list of upcoming fireworks displays for those who disagree.
GHOST SUBURBS
I grew up in a suburb that no longer exists. And so did thousands of other Brisbaneites. The official list of suburbs does not include such familiar place names as Grovely, Rosalie, Ithaca, Oxford Park, Ekibin and Wellers Hill. These names remain in use locally, but the council doesn’t officially recognises them as suburbs. In the case of Grovely, it has a school and a railway station but it is officially a subsection of Keperra. Long-term locals reckon it used to be the other way around, with parts of modern Keperra once known as West Grovely. Bizarrely, the Grovely locality also has a McDonald’s and a rugby league club that use the name “Arana Hills”, despite Arana Hills being a suburb of Moreton Bay Region, not Brisbane. A TV news bulletin mentioned the other night that there were moves for at least some of these suburb names to be reinstated. Is that a good idea, or should we just accept the things change and move on?
THIS IS SERIOUS!
At the time of writing, the Covid-19 situation is looking very grim in Victoria, but not so much in Queensland. We can’t afford complacency, though. A couple of weeks ago, when we thought it was safe to do so, a few friends and I gathered at a South Brisbane pub for a few Sunday-afternoon drinks. When we arrived, there was someone at the door handing out pieces of paper for us to fill in, with our names and phone numbers. We were told to hand them in when we left the premises. When I left, before 5pm, the place had started filling up and there was no longer a person at the door. I had to find someone to give my details to. I’ve just discovered that one of the friends who was with me left the premises with his piece of paper in his pocket. Neither us know for sure whether the people who arrived after us were required to give their contact details to pub staff. The upshot is that, had there been an infected person at that bar at that time, contact tracing would have been difficult. Please, people, do the right thing, if not in your own interests, then for the common good. This virus is highly contagious and it has already killed too many people. Queensland could still go the way of Victoria.
ROUGH JUSTICE
Talk radio announcers are supposed to be controversial, but has 4BC breakfast host Neil Breen bitten off more than he can chew? Breenie, as he’s known, declared that he “can’t cop” the Golden Rough. Well, I’m offended. Along with the Violet Crumble bar, Pollywaffle, Clinkers, Wagon Wheels, and the long-gone Panda chips and Brunchies, Golden Roughs were a part of my childhood. I’m sure others have fond memories of them, too. On a related topic, who else remembers when we all mispronounced Nestlé as ness-ell, rather than ness-lay?
MEANWHILE …
If you haven’t read it already (and you really should subscribe), here’s a link to my feature for InQueensland about Brisbane standup comic Kat Davidson.
Queensland Seniors Week turns 60 this year — an anniversary it shares with the Queensland Ballet. So it makes sense for the two to get together for a celebration. Among the 195 events for the week, from August 8-15, will be virtual dancing. Also, on August 15, there’s a streamed 40-minute event called Drawn Together, sponsored by QPAC and featuring musical guests plus conversations with Dame Quentin Bryce and QPAC elder in residence Aunty Colleen Wall. Details of other Seniors Week activities are available on their website.
Matilda is Australia’s favourite musical. In Afghanistan it’s Rock of Ages, while in Honduras it’s The Lion King, in Russia it’s Notre-Dame de Paris and in Timor-Leste it’s A Chorus Line. That’s according to ticketing platform TicketSource, which has researched Twitter trends and other online data over 15 years. More from Playbill here.
If you want to keep up with the performing arts online, consider subscribing to QPAC at Home newsletter.
FEEDBACK
Last week, I asked whether you’d rather be hot or cold. On Twitter, Royce replied: “I definitely prefer the cold — you can rug up to keep warm, but when it’s hot there’s not much you can do besides be hot.” Kim says: “I’ve got friends who won’t come up here in summer because of the heat and I don’t blame them at all.” Lyn agreed that it’s “easier to get warm than cool down”, while Diana was more blunt, saying “if the weather kills you, it’s better to freeze than burn”.
Regarding the move by Hit105 to re-embrace its old name of B105, Jeremy noted that it proved that the “‘fad’ of localism isn’t a fad at all, but good business sense”.
In answer to my item about why there’s no big TV variety show like Hey Hey It’s Saturday these days, Mike asked: “Didn’t Rove have a very short-lived crack at it a year or so ago? Think it lasted one or two eps. Seemed a shame they didn’t hang in there to give the show a chance to find its feet!” And Spencer responded: “We made a point of watching Rove every week to support it. The Sunday Takeaway on Ten as well.” On the question of who would host such a show, Jill says, “I choose Bluey’s Dad, Bingo, for the host. He is the everyman (everydog?), a bit dorky and very Australian.”
Look forward to Mister Brisbane each release.
Live in Clifton Hill (known as a part of Moorooka). Real Estate agents use the Clifton Hill identifier and it is a shame the old suburb name is not better recognised as this was the name of (apparently) the only remaining WW1 Soldiers Settlements on the East Coast.
And my only complaint re Golden Roughs is that they have got much smaller and more expensive over the years 😩.
Keep up the great work Mister Brisbane - we need something to smile at and reminisce about in these uncertain and scary times.