Back In Brisbane

Every time I pay a visit to Brisbane, I invariably ask myself the question “should I return to live here?”

Having grown up in Lismore, and having family here, Brisbane was a fairly obvious choice for me for university during the 1980s.

The first three years I spent in Brisbane (1984-1986) were memorable. During the first year, my mum became quite ill, and later died, and so I spent most of that year travelling back and forwards between Brisbane and Lismore. During the second and third years I began to spend more time in Brisbane, made some life-long friendships, and (of course) there was the life changing experience of attending university.

During the fouth year, when I worked at Coles New World (Sunnybank, Fairfield and then night-packing at Toowoong), life was also memorable. But it was also the year where I began to wonder about my future. Working at Coles was never really “my thing”, and so after about eight or nine months I quit my job, and was briefly unemployed.

At the beginning of 1988, I saw a job advertised to work at 2WEB, Bourke, and after taking some advice, applied for it, obtained the job, and moved away. Though I’ve maintained links with Brisbane through family and work ever since, I’ve never really thought seriously about returning. But as I begin to think about the rest of my life, and in particular, my retirement years, I do wonder from time to time if my latter years will be in Sydney, or back home in either Lismore or Brisbane.

As I went for a morning walk around the city this week, these thoughts have gone through my mind. As well, as wondering what my life would have been like had I not chose to go for that job in Bourke. Would I still be living in Brisbane, doing something quite different with my life? There’s no answer to these questions, of course. But nice to contemplate.

Brisbaneś Southbank at Night.

Government building, then and now.

Back In Brisbane

The muddy Brisbane River

Southbank Yoga

Brisbane Foodtrucks

Back In Brisbane