Postcard from South Bank

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.

Nowhere is that plainer than the jewel of a riverside playground on the South Bank. Nearly all the touristy shops, restaurants, cafes and even superettes are closed and the place is as dead as the city itself.  But at night, when the sub-tropical heat dies down a little, it shimmers with the smiles of a thousand people who didn't getaway.  They arrive with their blankets, babies, food from their own kitchens, cheap Christmas presents, swimming togs and big mats to claim a spot on the grass.  They are making the most of the free time they have in a beautiful  and pleasant spot.

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. 

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 34^th 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.

Don't like the movie or swimming? Catch up with
 distant loved ones on the Internet.
 on the internet

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.