I haven't been to Brisbane in seven years. Last time I was there we -- my three best friends from uni, Heather, Carolyn, Marc, and I -- drove up from Armidale in a battered old Ford Falcon. We stayed at a backpackers on Roma street and drank vodka and bummed cigarettes from Irish boys. We went to Livid at the Showgrounds and drank more and smoked more, and got lost and danced in the moshpit and found each other at the end of the night, stoned, drunk, tired, ecstatic.
The next day we drove back the 'Dale -- or we tried to, but the old Falcon broke down somewhere on a freeway. We sat by the side of the road in the sun while we waited for roadside assistance. They turned up and announced that we wouldn't be going anywhere that day but they could fix it by tomorrow.
I called my uncle on a payphone and he came and got us and took us back to the Backpackers. We were all broke and the trip had turned grim, and Marc was moodily considering the cost of his broken down car. More than Austudy could provide for.
To ease the silence we walked into the city and went to Myers, which I loved as a kid from Dalby going to Brisbane for the weekend, because the top level had all these rides and playgrounds and seemed like a fabulous fantasy-land.
We shared a bucket of chips from the foodcourt and I stared at the rides, thinking that they'd been much better when I was 11. Then we walked to Southbank and wandered in the markets and stopped and had a beer -- 'cause there was always money for beer -- and we admitted being broken down in a city where you could buy beer just about anywhere wasn't so bad.
At the backpackers we drank some more and listened to strangers fucking in the next room, then finally we went out for a cheap meal at some Italian place which was next to another restaurant that had a replica of the Eiffel Tower next door. We bitched about the backpackers and dreamed of the day when we'd all be able to stay in hotel rooms and the toilets would be clean and not clogged, and you wouldn't have to wear thongs in the shower.
Finally we left Brisbane in the pouring rain, listening to old compilation tapes and eating Malteasers, silent in the car. We all gave Marc money for the repairs on the car and I think I lived on two-minute noodles -- and beer and B&H Ultra-milds, there was always money for those -- for weeks afterwards.
That trip has taken on the blinding glare of nostalgia and I remember Brisbane as a sticky, loud, exciting place; a place where I had fun, the sort of fun you stop having when you leave uni and get a job and have to be there at 9am every Monday morning. And there was the stress of being broke and being in a strange place, three girls and one guy, but thank god we had Marc around who was 6"4 and towered over the creeps.
And I remember smoking, which I don't do anymore, sitting out the front of the backpackers with my cigarette and the heat and the hazy sky and imaging myself in the future living somewhere like Brisbane. Somewhere better than Armidale. I quit smoking at the end of that year and haven't done it since, and I moved to Sydney not long after, so I've never lived in Brisbane.
Flying into the city on Tuesday night I was thinking about that last trip, but there were no profound things I could draw from the shapes of my memories. Seven years is a good time between visits, though. Long enough for change, short enough for some familiarity. Though the Myer Centre doesn't have rides anymore, the rides I loved so much from two decades ago, and that made me sad for a few minutes.
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