The Pencil Guy: Hourann's illogical blog

Still can’t shake that small-town thinking

Brisbane's Northbank; Creative Commons licence does not apply to this image

  • This is a picture of Brisbane’s new Northbank waterfront development, announced by Peter Beattie to much fanfare two months ago. It’s kinda like Northbridge Link, except smaller, but also cooler because it’s by the river. And just like Northbridge Link, there’s a cop-out: building over a freeway is apparently too expensive, so they’ll reclaim part of the river and build next to it. Anyway, this is interesting because of the comments I’ve read in response to the proposal. Aside from critics of Multiplex (whom Beattie has swindled into paying for the whole shebang), it amazes me that the project’s opponents sound basically identical to the critics of big projects in Perth. Ours is not the only city with people who’ve failed to realise that this ain’t no country town anymores …!
  • Speaking of Brisbane, the Fairfax company recently launched a new news site for that town, in what seems to be a move away from their newsprint roots. I wonder if they’re hoping to use the Web to counter their lack of influence outside Sydney and Melbourne?
  • And speaking of Northbridge Link, I’ve sent off my opinion on the draft plan.
  • Finally, I’d like to take a moment to discuss GO3, the games expo last weekend that disappointed because it had only one new game on show and not many east coast developers. Everywhere I look, it’s being used as an excuse to launch into wholesale Perth-bashing (even by locals!). Apparently being in a medium-sized and isolated city makes it impossible to hold a decent conference. Have these people never heard of SXSW, or of CeBIT? Austin is the same size as Perth, Hanover is smaller, and neither is all that easy to get to from Silicon Valley. No, the real problem was that the conference is new, isn’t well-known, and has too few sponsors to be able to throw down the megabucks needed to draw top-tier exhibitors. If the organisers have any competence, they’ll work at addressing this in future.
  1. Or, alternatively, the Australian Medical Students’ Association 2006 Convention, which was not only the biggest medical student conference in Australian history (well, until this year) but was the biggest medical conference of any kind in Australia.

  2. [...] Pencil Guy has a great post on the proposed Brisbane CBD Northbank development.  Looks as if, like Darwin, Brisbane also hosts some nostalgic yearners for the days when Brissie [...]

  3. It will be a nice choke, narrowing the river so, in the event of a 75 year flood event; notwithstanding the upper reaches, flood control dams that have been built, should more extreme weather events in the future, come to pass.

  4. Tom, I’m not from Brisbane and thus not an expert, but there seeemed to be two schools of thought: the official line is that the development won’t narrow the river much and will therefore make little difference to water flow, but some people reckon that narrowing will generally be bad for a river that’s already in sub-optimal health.

    David, quite so! I wish these critics would open their eyes sometimes …

Care to leave a comment?