Valley Girl

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Hi folks, I'm staying in central Brisbane for a week to get a closer look at the city. Brisbane is a nice city, with a village type feel and just enough people to feel busy but relaxed. As it's not such an old city compared to most others I have been to outside Oz, I haven't had a knackering itinerary of ancient monuments and museums to cram into my days; it's more about picking an area from the map in the Rough Guide I stole from the Bellview in Cairns, getting there, and walking around exploring in a totally random way. So far I spent time roaming the South Bank - I think it might be modelled on our own South Bank as it has the same sort of feel, with museums and theatres in big stone buildings that look like the Hayward or the National Theatre, and a fake beach where lots of kids hang out, and I really liked the West End, which is a sort of laid back, cool as fuck villagey bit with lots of chinese and vietnamese, avant garde book shops, girls with shaved heads and boys with big dreds. I had a tea and some really good turkish delight in a greek cafe there, and had prawns on suagr cane in rice pancakes at the chinese recommended by the Rough Guide as 'the best'. It was pretty good but not the best. I showed the recifew to the owners, an old chinese couple, who were quite interested in how they got a mention.

The Rough Guide does have a few good tips on places to go or eat that are sort of 'off the track', on areas that are much less touristy. I use it to find decent hostels too. I stayed my first two nights in town at The Aussie Way hostel in Petrie Terrace, North-West and about 15 mins walk to the CBD (central business district, equivalent to Oxford Circus and Canary Wharf in one small area). Petrie is kinda cute, it's really a suburb that has been sucked into the town as many other parts have been, with a sort of hippy feel (but mercifully without any hash pipe shops or tye die t shirts), a sort of cafe/little bakery type place with a handful of bars. Much like at home, it has its little upmarket gentrified converted warehouse flats where no doubt media types live, but they're not pretentious enough to irritate. The hostel was on a cute street at the top of a steep hill, most of the houses on the street are Queenslanders and they seem to be old ones too, in various states of repair or disrepair, but all really lovely to look at with their verandahs and bay window, and tin roofs. The hostel was one of these and retained a lot of the original features like high roof, bay window, different levels in the house just like those victorian terraces in London where like 12 people seem to live... I stayed with three Japanese girls, all travelling alone (the manager thoughfully put them in the same room), one of whom is on the road for 3 years! We talked a little about travelling alone.

Two nights back I decided I wanted to stay in Fortitude Valley, so I came to the Balmoral Hostel right in the centre of the Valley, a bargain at $16 a night. The Valley is great - very small and villagey again, completely unpretentious but fill of students, artists and rock types, and very cool charity shops - but it is universally panned by Ozzies and Brissy residents as being extremely dangerous, full of prostitues and drunks, homeless people, dirt, grime, sin, and the worst, of course, Asians and Aborigines. All of the above is true; it contains all those things. But I find it really lame the way people bang on about it, because this place seems to be safe, warm, cool, and I've had nothing but fun here. There are nude bars but any declothes activity is well inside, and unli,e in Soho there are no touting ladies on the doors. There are people selling the Big Issue but they don't look homeless, they look like they were hired by an agency. Some types that look like potential trouble are hanging round but it is so hot, they can't seem to be arsed with causing any havoc. In fact they seem to be perfectly normal, sat around on benches chatting and drinking water. I walk around on my own and don't feel unsafe. I think this place is a bit like Brixton in that it has that sort of reputation based on a bad period of history which has moved into legend, while the place itself has moved on. I am told by residents that there was a time years back when this area was pretty rough. But it has all the character a place that has cool history should have. But I have had a good few people warn me not to walk around alone, not to be afraid of the homeless here, to watch for crazies.... it shows how naive white people are here that they are afraid of homeless people; that reflects the quality of life and the cosseting of the middle classes. The Valley is also well placed for travel round town as it has a train line stopping here that takes you to the South Bank, Roma Street (where the Greyhound stop is) and Central in ten minutes. Of course, the Valley has its own gentrification going on, though it is just at the beginning and is not moving at a pace anything like that of, say, some parts of Brixton. It hasn';t changed the character of the place and isn't intrusive. New Farm is an area adjoining the Valley that is going the way of Clapham, but nowhere near as poncy; just a lot of new contemporary style units being built, cafes selling skinny de-caff no-froth triple-filtered whatevers, and posh lifestyle gyms. A friend of mine who lives here (he said he lives in the Valley but his house is most definitely in New Farm.... he is suitably indie enough to be omitting that fact out of the conversation) lives in one of the very last original houses still standing, sanwiched in between new units with its carved wooden facade and corrugated iron roof. It is absolutely lovely; very compact inside, wooden floors, rooms rammed with paraphernalia left by various residents like old 50's suitcases, records, trinkets, sofas, what looks like a Hammond Organ, lots of old original fixtures... its properly bohemian (I'm beginning to hate that word) and it's the house of my dreams. Shame its days are numbered as its on prime development land. Drinking home brew on the tin roof/balcony underneath another super-starry night was rad. So was breaking into someone's private pool in the middle of the night for an illegal swim.... thanks Cam...

I have been out a few nights in the Valley now and I'm liking Ric's bar, a slightly grubby indie hangout where they play a mix of music that puts it somewhere between How Does It Feel To Be Loved? and maybe a night at The Barfly. I am going again this Friday with Sally, the girl I met on the Whitsundays trip who is now working as an au pair in Brisbane. Tonight I am meeting a friend of a friend from London who loved here a few months back, just to say hello and chew over what it's like living and working here. I'll probably go back to my auntie's house on Sunday and spend my last week in Queensland with the rellys. I am back on the Greyhound to 2 days in Byron Bay on Feb 1, and then on to Sydney. I have passed through Byron on my way to and from Sydney and it looks vastly different to how it did the last time I was there in 1998-9 (whenever it was). It was always famous for being a pretty quiet, hippie commune type place with not much tourist shite. Now it's heaving with pissed up teenagers and stupid bong shops. I'll just spend the two days at the Lighthouse and the Beach, as I expect it will be very disappointing to see it now. But just in case it isn't that bad, I decided two days was enough to find out for myself.

Still on the lookout for a spare room in Sydney. I had one call from my listing on this flatshare website which was... interesting.
The guy was like, 'I've had good experiences with English tenants before so I thought I'd give you a call'. All good, I thought. 'I have a girlfriend who stays over a couple nights a week, are you fairly open minded about that," was his first question. I thought he must mean am I some kind of fundamentalist catholic missionary devoting her life to eradicating fornication in unmarrieds by masquerading as a traveller looking for a room - so I said yes, that's no problem, it's nothing to do with me anyway... then he was like, 'so are you travelling alone or with someone - are you single or do you have a boyfriend?' I thought this was sus and was none of his business, but just in case I was over reacting I said, 'well, does that affect the flatshare somehow?' he said, 'well you know, I'm a pretty good looking bloke, tall dark and handsome, and are you fairly open minded about that?" I was like, huh? I figured he was finding out if I was 'open' to joining him and his chick or something. So I told him: 'I'm a single girl travelling alone looking for a flatshare, and when I say flatshare, I don't mean shag, I mean flatshare, just to be clear. Is that ok?'

The phone went dead....

😉 the world is crawling with losers! Wonder if that was what he meant by 'good experiences with English tenants'... some other Japanese girl with a cheap room has replied to my ad and she doesn't seem insane or dodgy, so it should all be fine.

Oh yeah and the reason for no new photos is that I have this new camera which I don't like and haven't got any photos worth sharing. I may change it next week. I miss having new photos. But I did buy a 4 gig memorystick to put all my photos on so I can mail the cd's home.
x

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Comments

[Onehorsetown Loaferville]

hi dude
hey yeah anther camera, and another of the same type of boy! anyway he's so last week.................... miss you.... dont forget my birthday feb 18 ;) x x x