Welcome to Brisbane

There was a long queue for taxis at Brisbane Airport this morning. At one point, there was maybe 100 in the queue with no taxis. Thankfully the taxis didn’t take too long to arrive. Lucky for me, I was wearing shorts as it was pretty bloody humid.

By mid-afternoon the humidity had gone. In its place were dark skies with a greenish hue, and bucket loads of rain. At one point, the thunder and rain were so loud I could barely hear the radio on the desk next to me. Looking out my window, all the cars had their lights on, and it was almost as if it was night.

Unfortunately the rain came inside our building also. As pathways flooded, the rain found its way under doors and through cracks. A bucket and mop became my tool of trade for my first day in Brisbane.

I’m here for a week helping out the team who’ve been working flat out over the last two months covering the seemingly never ending series of natural disasters. On a personal sense, it’s good too, as I get to catch up with family.

I also get to go down memory lane, as I’m staying at Toowong, not far from where I used to live. Although the house I used to live in is no longer at Taringa (replaced by an apartment block many years ago), not much else seems to have changed. The train station is a little more modern, admittedly, but the Toowong Village Shopping Centre doesn’t seem to have changed that much in twenty-something years.

I swear the last time I went to the Toowong Village was when I used to work for Coles New World (as it was called then). In the intervening period between when I quit Coles Fairfield – and was largely unemployed – before beginning my radio career, I did a fair bit of night-packing at Coles Toowong.

It was funny to go back to Coles tonight on a bit of a grocery run, and to think what if I’d stayed in Brisbane, hadn’t pursued my radio career dream. I don’t know what the answer is, but it was fun to briefly consider that thought as I walked around the supermarket tonight.