The Humid Canopy

By Rino Breebaart

If Brisbane is a state of mind... what is it?
Love it or loathe it, leave it or breathe it: Brisbane has come a long way in the last 25 years, let alone the last 150. But at what cost? Can a city that doesn’t hold onto its past carry a strong identity?
This book is a false-colour rendering of Brisbane’s mental environment, told by a former public servant sacked by the Newman regime. His mission: to nail the reality of Brisbane from the streets up.
A book for people who feel ambivalent about Brisbane. Beautiful or ugly; daggy or sunny? Big country town or new world city?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781326234249

Book preview

The Humid Canopycover-image-web.jpg

The Humid Canopy

A psychogeography of Brisbane

Rino Breebaart

Copyright © Rino Breebaart 2015

All rights reserved.

Published by Slf Publishing | Brisbane | 2015

ISBN: 978-1-326-19170-2 (paperback)

978-1-326-23424-9 (ebook)

This is a work of (mostly) fiction. The characters are fictitious. Where the names of real places, institutions, buildings and public figures are projected onto made-up stuff, they are intended to denote only made-up stuff, not anything presently real.

Printed by lulu.com |also available on amazon.com

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Cover image: Ham’s map of Brisbane, 1863 (detail).

Introduction

Corner Edward and Mary Street

— Just the man! he said with arms open, jogging towards me and taking me up in his sweep. I was about to cross and go up Edward Street, but he corrected me down Mary, his arm forceful on my shoulder.

The mobile contrast of his vision: faded check shirt under a maroon cravat, expired linen jacket and baggy pants. His arms wide in recognition and surprise, palms up — as if to say this is my theatre and all my domain: welcome. Crossing the street diagonally, oblivious to the cars bearing down on him. The tall sunlight exposed him as a blue-yellow bus on Edward framed his background for a second.

Clear blue eyes and frustrated beard of light red and brown. An impression of disdain and savageness disappearing with a smile.

— And I was just warbling to myself, he said, his eyes shooting to the skyline, aglow with ideas. Saying, this same street with its signs, curving down Eagle, and you here at just the intersection to prove it: that nothing’s new and everything’s done. Listen, I’ve got — and here he paused, still holding my shoulder.

— You don’t remember. We’ve done this before, back in May last year. We drank at the Belgian. We walked out and ran into a woman with ribbon-laced shoes. Black shoes like from of an old buxom French catalogue. We talked and spun around the block and then flopped in the park. That woman set me off, he said, glowing.

— Hello, Burke. You lectured me, if I remember right ... The sameness of day, the time and the place bubbled up vaguely. Though all summer days are the same here — it was this street.

We pass the Euro and approach the busy corner of Spring cafe. Lunch time table numbers and those without reservations, the people pending and checking their phones. Shiny black tiles border a window that opens to a kitchen; blackboard specials dangle overhead. A cutting board of canapés is directed to a table, staff moving sideways.  My original destination fades from mind — his urgent interceding, my lunchtime deferred.

— And now you’re here and we’re going to walk around and get us a drink. You’ve helped me prove it. The timing is perfect.

— I think you should reveal it, Burke, whatever it is. Grinning.

A strange scaly sculpture gesticulates with a mobile phone at the true corner of Felix Street. It towers in obtuse statement, ignored. Wall furniture.

— Just this: to have you here on the street, walking this way. The same experience. We met and now we discuss. The sun was out. This happened and will happen again — maybe tuned to a different interval, but the same general key.

His face was brimming at the head of a surge. A queue of shortsleeves extended from LR Sushi past the barber’s: Engrish shouts of Harro! from within. Burke was fast and involved in his train; my reaction — my comprehension, late in catching up.

— That meeting you again is good — it means there’s repetition and repetition proves there’s nothing new. From now on if this never happens or keeps happening continuously, forever, it’ll be the same. You and me right here, this light, and the promise of ales and women, and all this as it should be, correct and good because it confirms — here, a microlapse of attention — that everything, experience, has a limit — the limit of what’s human and possible for us. In time. That there can’t always be new stuff, no reckless free will. And that’s good and something I hadn’t fully worked out until today, meeting you on Edward at the sign of the Belgian, at the same time and going the same way. Again. Damned good.

We turn at the fish restaurant that’s now an Indian and soon will be something else, against the traffic coming down Margaret Street. Restaurants where once there were foundries and dirty industry: Frog’s Hollow. The floodable Port Office with its sign twinkling ahead. And right again on Edward; in every direction an oncoming tide of metal. Another bus rumbles by the edge of the curb, noisy with heat.

— We need some of Belgian’s finest. A tripel to sweeten my news.

A low-slung Mustang roared by playing uncanny loud bop. For a moment we have a soundtrack, ourselves and the cars, a rolling mass of syncopated metal.

Under the old name of Spencer we pass apartments and retail, small-time boutiques and full-size prices on uneven pavements. Delivery trucks hog the parks. Smokers killing their butts or flicking them in the gutter. Then the open-air bar of the Belgian already peopled with drinkers. We continue to the proper entrance on Mary, to the fine old warehouse with its European double doors. The visual cheer of the bar and the rusty-authentic paraphernalia lining the walls, the old Flemish phrases riffing ambiguous. Did they really say that? A franchise vibe manned by travelling students, not a proprietary Belgian. Brussels: too cold of ale. Burke marched up and laid down orders and urgency.

Over an elongated glass with a shallow head of foam, seated and bent, Burke finally focused.

— The state of Queensland has severed me from my job.

His eyes tracked mine and then did a little dance of ‘I know, right?’ Then retreated with a nip of embarrassment.

Quick: which department did he work for; where and how long? Not enough knowledge of this man beyond my two or three encounters, short meetings during work experience, and a chance encounter on Edward that turned into a major session. His withering acid in a swathe of buzzword bureaucrats; the sartorial dissonance of the perpetual PhD student. Ah: the Lands Centre. Or was it Mineral House? One of those government hulks.

— Oh shit, Burke; Newman’s axe. I’m sorry.

— We all knew it was possible; we just didn’t know how many of us would go and get it. The chop.

— How many?

— Half the unit.

— All at the same level?

— Across the board. If you look at the floor, the gutting hit management too. Dead weight, they said, and dead options for the rest of us.

— So how did they break it?

— Oh, with a brief conversation: you’re one of 14,000 unfortunately. My manager read it off with scripted flatness. The implicit punch didn’t hit until afterwards in the elevator down, of going through the motions. We’re sorry but we have to — I hope you understand our position — we have to make changes — savings and efficiencies. There’s nothing more we can do; here’s a counselling number and here’s a job placement pool; they’ll kick you out later. For less. Oh and I got a cab voucher. From the director I worked with for twelve years; my little farewell present. Not a watch but a voucher. No farewell drinks like the others, I just walked out; got my things and left. Livid and ropable. Walked all the way home in a beeline. Look, he said, here’s the voucher.

He presented a crisp cabcharge voucher.

— Which you’re not going to cash in?

— Saving it for a trip to Sydney.

He drew on his Belgian. The sweet, over-fermented culture of a world far away. And drank with deliberate thirst.

He’d taken to wearing cheap cravats, in imitation of who I don’t know, since those first encounters several years back. First a light paisley, and then silk monotones. Subtly off colour, always. A dissonance under his beard masking the birth of an acid barb. A rudeness unmatched by soft watery blue eyes, brows twitched upward in a calculated Huh? A particular and careful deceiver of the aged, especially with his hat and old-school hauteur. And but who wears a cravat in this heat? Dramatically mopping his brow with it, a dissembling act. How would you take it, serving this man his coffee and water, to see that linen shirt topped with garish silk? A calculated distraction, a camouflage for shots delivered with humour tuned to a narrow frequency, serving itself alone. A stealth satirist.

— And what about you, head-wise: holding up?

— Oh, the usual feelings are raging in and out: anger, surprise, tremors of shame. And then more anger. Unnerving because it’s so damn personal: feeling like you’ve been singled out and haven’t done your job properly, as if someone higher up has it in for you. Sacking makes a fast failure of anyone. He belched under his breath, unloosened; he has to unload this.

— And there’s shame in the surprise of it; to know you’ve fooled yourself with security. That age-old covenant of the government job that never sacks you. The shame of having made myself comfortable, lazy: all undone the moment a box appears on your desk. You’ve been rationalised, reduced to surplus stock. Spat out by something called a renewal process in the anti-speak of government. Boned.

So now the public is just like the private sector, we’re told. No rights and everyone’s sackable. Heavy on temps and contracts. Adaptable and shifting with the tides. Money’s tight? Cut some resources and get back on track. Focus on core business and services. But in government the lies are fatter and rounder: because the economy required us to cut jobs, because our credit rating was in question and because our bloated debt was unserviceable — depending on how you squinted at it. Because our bloated bureaucracy is game for right-wing pundits and those who forget public servants equal public services. Oh the bloated spending of the previous government which must now be accounted for with petty vindictiveness. By culling the bastards. Squint how you like. Remaking the service along conservative lines.

Two suits come in, with the boisterous extroversion and tight shirts of salesmen. They attack the bar with hammy flirtation and show. The girls are rapt and responsive. Corporate leasing types.

— Real jobs are in the private sector, he said with extreme, ironic finger flexion. Public