Brisbane, Australia

Didn't Obama call it Brisvegas. I don't know if that nickname is affectionate or intended to be mocking.

Brisbane (pronounced Briz-bin) aka Brissie. Nice place, if you can afford it. Slightly more racists and bigots than the rest of Oz, and about as boring as watching two flies crawling up a wall.

I used to know someone who lived there. He said it was boring as shit.

OP: People outside of Australia don't think of it at all.

I used to live in Sydney, and we thought of it as dull.

Queensland is the embarrassment of Australia - filled with racists, Pauline Hanson supporters and bigots of all kinds.

Dull as dishwater.

My Uncle, Aunt and cousins live there now. They moved in the eighties. I hear they are racist now.

Brisbane--isn't it the capitol of Queensland? Other than that I don't know a great deal about it. I probably will never go there, but on the other hand, never say never.

Isn't it the hottest major city in Australia, and the most humid?

OMG, if you think my pussy stinks . . .

It has the reputation of redneckery and attitudes like the southern USA, but it also had a reputation for growing up and becoming more sophisticated and less Perth=like. But then came those devastating floods.

Isn't that where that cunt Muriel is from? She's terrible . . .

Don't get me started on the humidity in Brisbane - it is the worst! Okay you got me started. If you ever go to Brisbane avoid January and February. Day time temps in the mid 30s (celsius) and humidity at about 70% and it doesn't cool down much overnight. The rest of the year the weather is fine, especially in winter (blue skies, sunshine). High standard of coffee, lots of good restaurants but not a lot for tourists. It does have an interesting recent history, with the corruption and how it became a police state and had a close to fascist government in the 1970s and 80s.

As for the redneck element, been told by a lot of people that Brisbane is quite progressive and accepting of all sorts but once you leave the city limits, that's when the banjos start up. Although in the same-sex marriage vote, I think Queensland's overall vote for SSM was higher than NSW and Brisbane's was higher than Sydney.

We all liked Dylan :Yeandle, who lived on the streets in Brisbane as we recall.

To the person asking about the BrisVegas nickname - started as a joke in a Qld town called Rockhampton/RockVegas (now if you want to go somewhere boring check out Rockhampton) with a nod to the Flintstones and was adopted by Brisbane as a self-deprecating nickname because not a lot happens there. I mean they filmed Thor: Ragnorok here and there were crowds of people every day.

Brisvegas has its origins during WW2. With all the yanks in town, spending their money, it was dubbed 'Brisvegas'.

Brisbane: Don't Let The Tall Buildings Fool You.

Home of Punk............(arguably)

Porpoise Spit R11.

An Aussie once described Brisbane to me as "the city where hope goes to die."

I always wondered if he was being overly dramatic, but doesn't sound like it.

Not Brisbane, California

For the most part, Brisbane is rather bland and plastic.

I'm from Brissie too Op. Northside or southside? This is an important distinction as you would know lol.

"Isn't that where that cunt Muriel is from? She's terrible . . ."

It's Porpoise spit, you porpoise spit wad. [Breathe] I hope the rest of your life is as good as an ABBA song.

R22 Northside, in the house!

Southside always seemed to be lots of scrub, highways and shopping centres. Though I did once live in Norman Park.

Mate only someone from Brisbane would post asking what other people think of Brisbane.

Ha I too lived at Norman Park. I enjoy the Southside and we have Sunnybank close by with all that amazing Asian food.

R25 Small things amuse small minds, but even smaller minds look on, mate!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Brisbane is beautiful, all of Australia's major cities are beautiful, although my personal favorite is a minor city in size, Hobart. I love Tasmania.

OP here, to be clear, I don't live in Brisbane anymore, but was interested in what people thought of place, after the Texas thread, and what people say about Dallas.

Sorry, please forgive my curiosity.

R28 Do you like the Dark Mofo events in Hobart?

I was supposed to go to Brisbane to meet up with relatives. Ended up staying at the Gold Coast instead.

I flew into Brisbane in early February and spent the month in Byron Bay. I loved it, but it was humid. I also enjoyed Nimbin. You guys grow some killer weed, it needs to be legalized there!

There are quite a few attractive lesbians down here! Come and visit, ladies!

It's like a glitzy oversized trailer park full of dumb rednecks. They all vote Trump up there.

Bullshit R34! Fuck off back to your supercilious latte.lapping.

We also have a longer statistical life expectancy across several demographic groups in SEQueensland. So I will take me a piece of laid back lack of pretension, and raise you a stretvh of gplden sand 45minutes drive away after work.

^^stretch (of endless golden sand)

Who the hell thinks of frizz brain? Or Australia, for that matter? I certainly don't, unless someone like you mentions it, and then I think of racism and xenophobia, rumplefugly people who age like milk, skin cancer and grating accents which, if you could see them would look like an abortion.

Frizz Brain, I like it!

Beautiful one day, perfect the next!

R26 & R22 - i’m in the inner north (Grange area) - but I head to Norman Park semi regularly to fuck this incredibly hot and earthy young alternative/hippy bottom boy in his late twenties. Fuck he’s a great root! Often tag him if any other too mates are around as well - and have DP-ed him on several occasions. So passionate - and he gives the best head as well! I’m half in love with the guy. And fully in lust (he’s originally from Adelaide tho - so not sure we can claim him as Brizzie’s own yet - but I do think of him as one of Brisbane’s hidden treasures!)

R40 who old are you Mr Grange?

HOW!

More details on the hippy bottom!

I visited twice while courting an Australian from Brisbane who wanted me to relocate. US equivalent would be Jacksonville.

[quote]Beautiful one day, perfect the next!

Racist one day, bigoted the next!

All of you jokers whinging about Brissie's humidity haven't been Darwin or Cairns.

I lived in Brisbane for 18 months a long time ago. Friends still stuck there keep telling me it's got better. You can get a decent cup of coffee now. ... Wrong

I overnighted there last year. Pleasant enough with good downtown to airport transport, but few restaurants open late and not great shopping. Nice enough people.

OP, see R4. Most Americans know Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth. And of those, would only have an opinion of Sydney (generally positive).

Kind of trashy. Like a country town more than a city,

Brisbane guy.

Brisbane pride, filmed by a lesbian

[quote] filmed by a lesbian

Does that mean we should expect odd camera angles or something?

It's weird to see all the pine tress near the beach. I expected palms.

The one in California is pronounced BRIZZ-bain.

The guy who made this video is an ass, but his comments succinctly seem to sum up his fears about bogans becoming an epidemic in parts of Queensland.

Past-time?

Oh, dear.

I take it from that video that a "bogan" is Australian for trailer trash?

The fella ranting in that video at R56 is clearly a datalounger

Correct, R58.

Do they still have people huffing paint in the indoor/outdoor mall near the Casino downtown? That was kind of feral, out in the open and all.

I was there for a week about ten years ago. It never said "world-class" city to me. The buffet at the Sheraton was nice, and I got an R. M. Williams jacket I still have, but that's about it for memories. Except for the paint-sniffing. Hot, too at the end of January. Whoever said "Jacksonville" got the US analog right. There were bogans then (and people from the Middle East as I recall; people you weren't too fond of, or was that in Sydney?) and then there was the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast. Surfer's Paradise might once have been a paradise, but those days are gone. And the coral was going.

Darwin was the worst. Red wine there is served chilled to about 41F because outdoors, anyway, it's at room temperature in about five minutes if it isn't iced. And room temperature feels like about 120 or so...Brisbane wasn't quite that warm - maybe 105.

Porpoise Spit is the Gold Coast not Brisbane. One specific location: as Muriel leaves Porpoise Spit she gleefully yells out "Goodbye shopping centre!" That's The Pines in Elanora. You can see it from the highway heading to the Gold Coast airport.

Brisbane as a city has a cultural heart at Southbank and I've seen many musicals, ballet, plays, and art shows there. The traffic can be hellish because of the way the roads curve in and around the river getting through the city. It's pretty quiet after dinner. Wouldn't mind living there all in all.

The Brisbane, California is just south of San Francisco and used to be where the garbage dump was located. That sez it all about Brisbane.

Brisbane seems to have set itself up as the Bogan capital of Australia. I thought the West had problems with Bogans (in Rockingham/Mandurah) but their bogans are nothing compared to the rowdy and aggressive nature of the Qld ones, especially the Bogans of Logan (southern Brisbane).

Several years ago - maybe ten? - I had a friend who ran a modeling agency here in the Brisbane CBD (central business district = downtown).

She had been in the biz for ages and retired a few years later. Was a pretty friendly, cheery, Non- bitchy atmosphere there (nothing like the Janice Dickinson reality tv nonsense that was on around that time) - anyway...

So apparently one day there’s this big general casting call for some big ad campaign or other - and pretty much every model on the books (and a couple of other agencies too) got made up and dressed to the nines and came into the city over a staggered few-hour period.

The fun thing was - it happened to coincide with some big American ships being in town - and half the sailors having shore leave.

Those boys mustn’t have known what hit them...

The girls certainly didn’t! They the all turned up looking shell-shocked. As soon as they hit the city and headed through the Queen street pedestrian mall toward the office - they were just confronted by dozens and dozens of young uniformed sailors who thought all their christmases must have come at once! Every few steps these young guys would suddenly be all ‘why hi there!’ - trying to make small talk and get a conversation going - or just flat out ask them for a date. It was all really polite and charming - not offensive in the least! - utter gentlemen.

Just there were so many of ‘em...

The girls’ minds were all well and truly elsewhere and by the time they reached the casting - most of ‘em looked really distracted and flustered from having run the gauntlet.

I’m sure some of the girls told their friends and hit the clubs that night and a good time was had by all. Often wondered if any real romances came from it. And think that somewhere, there must be some young former sailors who remember Brisbane as that little city full of wave after wave of really beautiful girls :)

R65 great story.

Please explain!

It's a place of low I.Q. redneck types.

A cultural desert you would only wish on your worst enemy and even then that would garner a touch of sympathy within you.

While we are on the topic of Australia , I have always wondered how culturally similar, or different Australians are from Americans. Would an American visiting experience "culture shock "? Curious if any DLers can provide insight.

Ignorant U.S. American here: Opinions on Madelaide? It sounds like a very odd place: economy based on no-longer extant auto industry partially converted to nascent high tech; nearby wine country; city initially planned by the landscape architect who drew some of the major parks in London, and . . . ?

Adelaide has lots of low key charm and a great history. Some quite fabulous wines and foods, and very friendly. Nice beaches. Kind of conservative (not so much politically, more culturally and environmentally) family oriented and laid back. Nice place to buy a small cottage and do craft work.

[quote]Would an American visiting experience "culture shock "? Curious if any DLers can provide insight.

Aussies are far more similar to Brits than Yanks, since most Aussies have Brit ancestry, and the UK is still provides most immigrants. An American visiting won't experience culture shock so much as ennui shock, spending the whole trip waiting to experience Aussie "action" and then realizing at the end of your trip that it doesn't exist. That, due to its cultural and geographic isolation, one day in Australia is much like another. That there aren't any highs or lows, just middlings, day in and day out. That the only thing Aussies care about are sports and the pub, that the only thing that truly angers Aussies is if the CUB goes on strike right before Chrissie.

In addition to the beauty of the country, Oz is worth a visit for the sociological lesson about how millions of people exist quite well in social, political and cultural isolation from the rest of the world.

Enjoy your trip and look RIGHT before you cross the road!

Thanks, R71. Sounds appealing to me. I need to read a decent history of Australia. Maybe Robert Hughes' "The Fatal Shore"? I realize that book is primarily centered on Australia's colonization by whites and was written 30 years ago.

Was there few years ago. Unlike the more "iconic" Sydney or Melbourne i cant think of any reason to visit Brisbane. The far north city of Cairns is at least a gateway to the Great Barrier Reef. Plus most foreign visitors went straight to your more popular southern neighbor Gold Coast ; the Australia version of Miami-Orlando hybrid.

Sharks and spiders. And snakes. Dingoes. More spiders.

Noosa is a beautiful town, it was a summer town for the rich and powerful of Melbourne and Sydney to congregate, and is an ideal place to explore the Qld Hinterland which is truly heaven on earth. The Qld Granite belt can be reached within a couple of hours drive of Byron Bay and has some towns which are 1000m above sea level, cool enough for a wine industry and where it even does snow on occasion.

The Hinterland:

If it wasn't for the situation with the bogans I'd be seriously willing to give Queensland a try. I've dealt with bogans in other places who are just plain ignorant, and/or unpleasant morons. But the feral bogans of coastal Queensland are a much scarier breed: there is many more of them and it's intensified, there is definitely a malignant kind of character I've noticed in some. It probably comes down to the fact Brisbane and Surfers having a kind of magnetic pull for all sorts of people, including many of the rejects from other cities over the generations.

I'd fucking take New Zealand any day over that shithole, seriously!

Is NZ different, R79?

R69

I didn't and still don't after five looooooong rides to and from Australia. I always thought it's the United States done right: better weather and where most everything works. But I see the changes - and not for the better - every time I go. People seemed to know who they were and where they were going as individuals and as a nation back in the '80's and '90's. Now (and hey, like everywhere else) it seems a lot more fractured.

Don't use the US these days as a template. It's not working here.

What about Perth?

I know a lot of white South African ex-pats have relocated there, so does that mean it's more conservative, possibly racist?

Palazzo Versace Baby!

It’s the Fort Worth of the Southern Hemisphere.

R82, Perth is deathly Dull for a gay transplant. Once it had a thriving nightlife, the 100's of nightclubs replaced by hundreds of pharmacies. Hardware stores have replaced all the gay joints and are only place where you might see some hot tradies. Speaking of which, if methed out Heath Ledger types driving around in utes are your cup of tea there are 1000's of them in Perth.

This nifty little site allows one to click on one map and it'll show the coordinates on a second map in the opposite hemisphere. Apparently, Brisbane is at about the same latitude as Sarasota. Interesting. Melbourne is equivalent to San Francisco or Richmond, VA. Granted climate is influenced by many factors, but it gives one an idea of what to expect of where cities are in relation to the American reference point.

More cut cocks per capita than any other Aussie city.

Brisbane gave the world The Saints and the Go Betweens, so it will always have a place in my heart. Weird vibe though. The weather is always warm but every time I visit it feels cold. Agree that Noosa is fab. The beach is really beautiful and it has a lovely coastal walk that will take your breath away. Very gay friendly too.

[quote]Hardware stores have replaced all the gay joints

So you're saying the lesbians have taken over?

Come to Brisbane, QLD. You'll love it....

Love you Brisbane! Love the Hungry Jack's appearance.

Brizzie isn’t a total write-off culturally either!

I’m seeing none other than DL icon, Miss Patti Pupone, here tonight in her Don’t Monkey with Broadway show at QPAC (the Queensland Performing Arts Centre) - and I’m ridiculously excited about it.

I expect the audience will mostly comprise every showqueen in town - and their mothers.

It will be fabulous!

That sounds provincial-fabulous. Enjoy.

What about all the sharks?

R94 - Brisbane lies downstream on the Brisbane river. We generally don’t swim in it. Tho’ a few do. The odd shark gets seen occasionally (allegedly) - but we mostly just swim in public - and private - pools (sooooo many houses with pools here!). You have to drive nearly an hour south to get to the Gold Coast - or just over an hour north to the Sunshine Coast to get to beautiful beaches. Once there you can worry about sharks if you like... (tho to be honest - I’m far more concerned about the spread of irukandji to our climes as the oceans start to warm up. That’s freaking nightmarish!)

Brisbane is a has been city. It had hopes to become Australia's second city, but Melbourne started growing again, so much so, that it will eventually overtake Sydney.

Brisbane is likely to lose out to Perth soon as Australia's third largest city.

Virtually no one has ever heard of it outside of Australasia and no one inside there cares about.

Is it not only a matter of time before saltwater crocs take over the waterways?

Yes a matter of time. As in a thousand years.

Sandgate, Brisbane. Home of Courtney Act (and Kerri-Anne Kennerley)

What is the best suberb in Brisbane?

As an Irish taxi driver said to me after I had recently arrived in Brisbane 'I've lived in Australia 30 years- 10 in Melbourne , 10 in Sydney and 10 in Brisbane. Melbourne thinks it's Europe, but it isn't. Sydney thinks it's New York, but it isn't. Brisbane doesn't know what it is, but it seems to be having a good time finding out.

R101 - so much nicer than the Aussie cab driver who collected me from the airport when I’d first moved up here all those years ago!

Remember we were driving into the city and I explained I was coming to live here - and how excited I was as it was so pretty and warm and seemed very welcoming...

Her turned to me and said “ listen son, I’ve lived here all my life - make no mistake: it’s a surly town. Always has been - always will be. Don’t expect much” - which certainly shut me up! - and guess that what was he wanted as he could then continue to drive in peace without any cheerful chatter.

R92, how was Patti?

I'm from near Brisbane and some of these posts, well they are wrong. The whole thing stinks and its wrong and I don't like it.

ah Pauline, whether you like it or not you are a gay icon around those parts. As true as Sydney has Carlotta and Melbourne has Kylie... See you and your fish and chip float at the Mardi Gras this year!

You can keep your stinking "icons".

I'm plannin' on going to the Sydney Mardi Gras next year. Though I will dress in a dignified manner on my own float, not like the gay community who love to flaunt their naked flesh.

Brisbane can be a really fun town if you've got the right person to show you around.

It's interesting that both Qld and Western Australia have Labor governments in power at state level presently. Qld since 2015. Both states are traditional Labor states, yet swing periodically. Confusingly for non-Aussies, Labor are the left and favor non-big business in favor of social progression and are fiscally conservative (both parties also have left and right factions within themselves).

Liberal is the conservative or right wing branch of the two. Pauline Hanson was part of center right Liberal party, and broke away to form her own far right "One Nation" party. The ACT where Canberra is located is also Labor or left at state level, even though federally they are conservative (Liberal). Actually, only Tasmania, South Aust, and New South Wales now have right wing govs in power at state level.

Lynne Postlethwaite, must have been based on a Queenslander.

OP, have you ever had sex with an aboriginal? If so can you give us the dick report?

On what basis R10?

R111 OP here, yes I have. He was biracial and uncut.

R92 - Patti was freaking wonderful! Have an account of it on the thread about her - the one about her being difficult/diva-ish. She was so self assured and had the audience loving her from the get-go. And there were a few songs where she had the third year voice students from the Queensland Conservatorium as her choir - and you could see how awestruck they were - but that they - and she! - were having a ball.

R100 - there’s no one ‘best’ suburb. Depends on your selection criteria!

Do you want the trad, old money ones? Then that’s Hamilton and Ascot. Plenty of shiny newer money around Indooroopilly and Toowong and Taringa - and some beautifully renovated ‘Queenslanders’ in amongst all the new apartments. Nearer the uni? St Lucia and surrounds then. Beautiful old places but less ‘noov’ - Red Hill and Bardon. OTB? Balmoral and Hawthorne. Gay ghetto? New Farm & Tenneriffe. Gay ghetto on a stricter budget? Spring Hill and Bowen Hills. Pretend you’re in inner-city Melbourne or Sydney? Westend.

And there lots and lots of apartment living right in the heart of the CBD now too.

Really - anywhere within the five-ten km radius of the city centre is likely to be nice - but expensive!

Beyond that tho - can be highly variable. There be dragons...

(There’s a rule amongst friends in the know as well: when going to see trade - or Grindr hookups as they’re called now - don’t ever go beyond BCC boundaries. That’s Brisbane Ciry Council. It’s invariably never worth the time and effort!)

Thank you R114! I am currently looking at the possibility of buying a unit somewhere in Brisbane but a bit clueless about each suburb. There is home-grown knowledge I need to be aware of and I sense the dragons without really knowing what they are, besides flood areas.

New Farm is appealing in many ways. Once I would have wanted a campus-like feeling such as St. Lucia but now I think I want older more settled people around. New Farm has a lot going for it, now going to top of my list. Yes I noticed in Spring Hill you get more for your money. West end is up and coming but maybe a little rough around the edges? Haven't been to Hamilton or Ascot but will follow up with some research. I feel a bit daunted because Brisbane city area obviously has its secrets, both good and bad. Just don't know what they are! I'll remember your friends' rule of thumb...

It's the Paris of Queensland!

Ah ok R116 - glad to be if some help - if that was helpful?

By ‘there be dragons’ - I probably meant it more along the lines of ‘there be bogans’ -lol!

For all that’s been said about brizzie - it’s really a lot like all the other Oz capital cities. They’re pretty homogeneous really - yeah - they each have their own little quirks and flavours - and the landscape can be different (Brisbane is really very hilly for example!) but really they’re remarkably similar. Don’t think there’s a lot of regional variation much these days. Everyone is so digitally closely connected that news, customs, accents - are much the same nationwide.

And with most of the cities - the old inner suburbs closest the centres are the most desirable and have largely been gentrified and have the bigger incomes and higher levels of educational achievement by their inhabitants.

But if you travel into the outer suburbs - just try walking hand in hand with your boyfriend in the local supermarket! Lol! Seriously - just try to go grocery shopping with your male partner - no need to even make physical contact! - you’ll still get side eye and be viewed as if you’re an alien species. But it’s not a problem the closer you are to the city centres (god! It’s almost deriguer at new farm Coles!)

Also - just be really careful about buying an investment property - at least an apartment! - here. Consensus is we have a glut of them. They’re popping up everywhere! And I gather prices have come down to to oversupply. It’s great if you wanna live in one - bargains to be had! - but if you’re looking as an investment - might take a while to see price appreciate. Know several people who bought nice apartments only to have the prices drop as soon as they bought them. We seem to be selling the vast bulk of them to offshore investors - lots of HK and other Chinese money especially! - and many of these apartments seem to sit empty. You never see a light on in most of them at night. Surely that bubble will eventually burst?

Exception might be around the St Lucia area - people always want to rent close to the university there! - but even there - so much new building going on...

Best of luck! (Oh - and I know of a young woman here - daughter of a friend - who has just bought an investment property - in the UK! I forget which area - it wasn’t London - and seemed like a really odd move to me - but she felt it was a better prospect than here! Think she’s crazy - but who knows?)

R116 - Windsor and Newmarket are close to the Royal Brisbane Hospital - it’s a big teaching hospital and people probably get a stream of Tennants wanting to rent in the area.

Ashgrove, Grange abd Wilston are pretty nice inner north suburbs - they’ve all become pretty expensive - and are mainly houses - but there’ll be some apartments around too. Kelvin grove is close to town too - and the QUT campus.

On the inner Southside - Norman Park, Coorparoo and Morningside are all pretty nice as well.

East Brisbane could be worth a look -also close to a university campus and kangaroo point is just about all apartments now - has been for sometime. It’s kind of a shame what they’ve done there - ripped the guts out of an old working class suburb - like a mini Miami there these days.

And doubt forget South Brisbane - and Southbank. So much development there now - but it’s got a fun vibe - performing g arts centre, art galleries, the museum and state library - lots of restaurants too (broad range of quality and prices!)

Seems like an undistinguished city on the Gulf Coast - Jacksonville sounds about right. I hear the new (ish?) art museum is very nice however. The old "Queenslander" style houses are interesting and remind me of Creole architecture or the old wooden districts in Hilo and Hawaii in general.

Gold Coast and Surfer's Paradise both sound dreadful.

The old style fibro Queensland homes are great with sleep outs, high ceilings, sun porches, louvers and great big ceiling fans in every room. Big and airy, they suit the climate and tropical gardens perfectly and are set high, usually on stilts so the areas underneath are invariably turned into games rooms, apartments etc. They don't hold any heat whatsoever and let the cool breeze into the homes at night.

That type of large home has been pulled down in recent years for townhouse style development (or high-rise) typically in ugly Tuscan styling in line with the rest of new homes in Aus, which is really wrong for the climate and gets hellishly hot without air conditioning in every room with the black clay tiles, layers of double brick and tiny heat absorbing gardens, yuk!

Is it true Cairns is the gay capital?

Thanks so much for all that, it's the kind of knowledge I was seeking! Glad the B word has been brought up; plan is to avoid the bogan hangout areas as much as possible. New Farm looking better and better! I really enjoy my time in South Brisbane but wasn't sure if units (newer, maybe off the plan) would be prohibitive in price. I'm not an investor really and would hang on through any slumps.

R123 - again - hope it’s helpful!

If you’re planning to hang on and actually live in the apartment sometimes as well - then you should be fine. And New Farm has so many new apartment blocks and high rise developments going on - you’ll be spoiled for choice. It’s a good location for a gay man. It’s close the cbd - lots of glbt people live there - a ton of cafes and restaurants and shops - the pretty fabulous Powerhouse (an actual old powerhouse from the 1920s, converted into theatres and performing arts complex). Downside is that traffic is getting pretty choked as the neighbourhood was never really designed for that amount of people living there. But lots of people there don’t even bother with cars - you can bus it or taxi or Uber - or ferry - or walk! - and not have the hassle. Also - be mindful that if you live right up the end near Brunswick Street Mall it’s the old red light district and lotsa clubs, etc there - it can be noisy! People have been known to happily move in to the centre of where it’s all happening - then complain bitterly about the noise and try to lobby the council to DO SOMETHING! Fucking idiots.

Also expand your search to include Tenerife and Newstead. They’re kind of at the ends of New Farm - been heaps of development there - Newstead especially has come on in the last few years - and some really nice places there...

Any other questions - don’t hesitate to ask :)

R120 - just checked population sizes. Jacksonville doesn’t seem to be quite at a million - and Brisbane is at least double that. And usually people speak of ‘South East Queensland’ rather than just Brisbane - you include the population catchments from the Gold and Sunshine coasts, their hinterland and surrounds - which bumps it up nearly another million.

It’s probably not quite as provincial as you imagine. As I stated in the previous post - urban Oz is pretty homogenous there’s days. If you were released into the inner - or outer - suburbs of any of the capitals without much prior knowledge - think you’d be hard pressed to work out whereabouts you were.

R121 - no. NOT fibro! Old Queenslanders are made of wood. We call it VJ - but elsewhere it’s called weatherboard.

And while people say they’re perfectly suited to the climate - we’ll - they ain’t perfect! Many were and are uninsulated. They can still get hot and stuffy in the summer - and they’re hard to cool efficiently as they have high ceilings and lots of internal doors and cutouts making it hard to cool - or heat! - just part of them.

And tho our winters are short and not especially cold by northern hemisphere standards - in August when a westerly wind is blowing in - in uninsulated wooden house - you can feel very, very cold :(

^^ - sorry! My iPhone keeps wanting to turn ‘well’ into ‘we’ll’ - didn’t spot before posting :(

How are the milk bars?

R127 - sadly - milk bars - and the expression itself - have pretty much died out. Not many of them left now. It was - I guess - like the American terms ‘soda fountain’ and ‘malt shop’. Like everywhere else in the western world nowadays - it’s all fast food franchises. Same everywhere. Dull and bland. But safe.

THANK YOU R124, that's exactly the boots on the ground info I need. Had no idea about the Brunswick Mall history, but I have heard of the Valley and its club scene---no thanks. Newstead...I might have dropped into a Matt Blatt store there and the community had a good vibe. I am really wary of staying away from areas with drunken louts because of a fear of unprovoked one punches etc.

In terms of housing I can verify that fibro isn't too desirable a material as those type of houses often contain asbestos. And I never got the appeal of the Queenslander style for the reasons above, not suited for the climate since they often have no insulation, insect screens, old leaky windows. The houses shrink over the decades and there are gaps in the flooring and underneath doors. If you are willing to gut them and thoroughly update to modern standards then they can be charming and comfortable.

R129 - don’t be shy of New Farm tho - the top end where the Brunswick Street Mall is - is really Fortitude Vally - or just The Valley. New Farm is further down the peninsula that’s created by the twists of the Brisbane River. And at the end of the peninsular - it becomes Tenerife and Merthyr.

The whole Valley and New Farm tag has become fuzzy around the edges. Kinda used interchangeably nowadays - tho the Valley generally means the mall and train station area.

Newstead looks pretty great right now - it’s all so new after all! - but it’s quite expensive as it’s got the happening area cache. And all the shops and eateries there are renting at a premium - and that’s reflected in their prices.

Also - when you’re buying a house here - you generally get a building inspector’s report. It covers structal and pest issues

I’m not sure if this is common for apartments though. Especially new ones. People just assume they’re fine and have been approved by the council and are up to code. Which isn’t always the case. Since the building industry was made ‘self regulating’ by various right wing local and state governments - and the trend nationally! - it’s not as strict as it could - or should! - be...

Remember years ago taking a visiting architect friend to lunch at the then new and partially still under construction Portside complex of apartments and shops at Hamilton Wharf. They looked so swank - and were being priced sky high as a ‘prestigious’ development. As we strolled through the grounds - he pointed out a litany of flaws - soooooo many! And I truly believe that in a decade or so - there’ll be a litigation nightmare over sub standard and shoddy construction issues...

Go google ‘leaky building syndrome’ in Auckland - tho hopefully it won’t be as bad as that!

It all looks so schmick when it’s shiny and new - but caveat emptor....

Some friends here recently sold their little suburban house - just on ten kms from the cbd - and bought a really lovely theee bedroom apartment bordering the valley, looking out over the river near the Story Bridge. It’s gorgrous! They really love it. The irony is - when they first met and wanted to set up house - probably a dozen or more years ago - they couldn’t afford it there. So they bought a little house in the burbs. In the meantime - there’s a glut of apartments now - and people with kids want a lovely little house in the burbs. So the house appreciated in value a lot - and the apartment price dropped as it’s an older development now - and there is so much competition. They pretty much just swopped as the prices were almost the same.

It’s still a lovely apartment - even if the building looks a little dated compared to the scores of new blocks. And by now - you’d think if there were any building problems - the problems would have surfaced. So you might grab a bargain if you look at something slightly older...