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| Night swimming at Brisbane's South Bank |
A postcard from South Bank in Brisbane? Isn't that
home territory for someone who lives on Moreton Bay's southern
islands?
True but not quite. It is only but at this time of year inner city Brisbane can be just as foreign as visiting Bradford in the UK or Saint Antonio in Texas. It is not the mileage but the depth of the experience.We try to turn from the dog-eared page of our normal
preoccupations and read pages written by others in the grand book of life. Brisbane South Bank at Christmas time is one of those pages worth experiencing.
It is different because the commercial and power centre of the inner city closes down for the Australian Christmas season. The suits, the law, the public servants and the politicians pick up their families and head for their choice
of seaside: some the loudness of the Gold Coast, some to the more
muted Sunshine Coast, some to the deafening silence of Stradbroke Island across the Bay. Those
with more cash fly out to a beach of choice as far north as Bali, but
it is still all sand and splashing about in the water. More often than not they huddle together with
similar people from their own circle and order the same beer and food
as they have at home. Brisbane is stuck with those who can't (or choose not to) getaway.
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| Chilling out with a movie |
What attracts them is not just the
cooler winds off the river and the fairytale backdrop of an empty city dressed for the most joyful time of the year but the remarkable free swimming area in the centre of this
peculiarly Queensland public park.
Deep into the night people frolic in
the chest high water—no overly serious people doing exercise laps
here, no diving boards, no gym—just those wanting to wallowing and splashing about a
lot. They are overseen by half a dozen pleasant young lifeguards whose eyes
never seem to stop scanning for problems that never seem to
eventuate. Upstream from the main pool scores of children swarm and shriek with laughter over the rocks and through the fountains of a wet play area.
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| Santa modelled in sand. Note the shiny nose on Rudolph |
The only food that on sale was ice cream cones from
a pushcart vendor. Alcohol and the Rap Music was discretely limited to the
“surf club” at the back of the beach. The lifeguards, police and cleaning staff seemed to have little work to do in looking after the happy
families united around the pool.
At holiday time the City Council's activities programme ramps up a notch with movies for those in the pool
and its surrounding beach. The soft and gooey confection “Miracle on 34th
Street”, the 1994 remake of the 1947 classic, was the feature on this Christmas Eve. Snow-flecked people wrapped against the
cold and skating in front of New York's Rockefeller Centre stood
in startling contrast to the audience of swimmers. But then, so did
the sand sculpture of Santa with his sleigh and reindeer gracing the
entrance of the park--especially when you saw the sign inviting you to spot the possum in the display.
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| Don't like the movie or swimming? Catch up with distant loved ones on the Internet. on the internet |
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| Swimmers watching the ice skating |
In all, it was a slightly surrealistic scene
bathed in the reflected glow of in-pool lighting. This sense was reinforced by the cultural
sound mix murmuring behind the movie's schmaltzy American soundtrack:
I recognised snatches of Arabic, Malay, Mandarin, Dutch, Slavic and
French dialects and well as the usual spread of international and
regional Englishees rising from the Polynesia, Japan, Indian and China. Not so much an
American-style 'melting pot' here as an Australian melting pool.
It
was peace on earth, it was a goodwill to all; it was a reminder that such things are possible in a world where hate carnage and terrible crimes dominate the news.
Thank you South Bank for bringing this simple thought home to me this Christmas.
