If you’re anything like us, you need to adapt to change. You might not like it; we understand that pain which probably makes you want to scratch your eyes out – especially if it’s an unsettling aesthetic change, or one that interferes with your daily routine. Neither the less, you find yourself accepting it and before you know it you don’t even remember what life was like before it happened.
That’s how we feel about Brisbane.
“Will this construction ever end?” we yell with fury. It is like an epidemic taking over Brisbane, all road work and construction zones.
Ok, so it doesn’t really bother us anymore, but it was full on to begin with. When all the roads first started changing, we’d be driving along and the next thing we knew, “Hello, place in Brisbane we didn’t know existed.” It was hectic, but now everyone is aware of the changes and has adapted accordingly.
Brisbane is transforming, we have a lot of potential that is starting to blossom. The stereotype we had originally created for ourselves, being the beer bogans and thong bearers, is now on the brink of extinction, and we are, in fact, trendier than we have ever been.
Fashionably late, which is so like us, we are finally slashing our way through a new phase; one that we know Sydney and Melbourne has already entered and passed. It isn’t just all about road works and underground tunnels evolving, it is about culture. Personally, we think that we should be extending upwards, towards the sky like Singapore had developed. Instead we are expanding outwards; we need to because of the previous errors in judgement regarding our population growth. For this reason we feel that our environment is starting to suffer more than it should, especially our beautiful botanical gardens, which is trampled on during every rock festival ridden event. Thus, we do the best we can at raising awareness of events like the Brisbane Green Earth Festival.
Behind Dubai and Tokyo, Brisbane is one of the most rapidly growing cities in the world, regarding population and infrastructure. These days, when we walk down Queen Street on a Friday, late night in the city, we notice beautiful South African women feeding their children at a café, in the distance we can see two Chinese girls scoffing down Canadian frozen yoghurt, it’s all here – and it’s exhilarating culture.
2010 has been a whirlwind year so far for Brisbane; we are deeply exploring what we thought Brisbane was lacking, and what we saw Melbourne had to offer. We have our first laneways, filled with new, exciting and exotic ventures to explore – all of which ends up inside our bellies, might we add. We are finding a new way to identify with our ancestors and to embrace all the different backgrounds we come from.
After all of these changes, we just hope that the one aspect of Brisbane that we love the most will always stay the same; acceptance. Brisbane offers nothing but acceptance and we have created a nature of freedom that simply doesn’t give a damn about what you do – even the victims of horrid fashion are accepted – as a city, we just don’t care. Although, that could just be the humidity speaking, driving society into a delirious state.
Change is a good thing; so needed, so welcome and so positive. This is it.
And we’re very excited.
