If you want to move to the Valley, you need to live with the noise

There is a special place in hell for people who move into an established vibrant neighbourhood and complain about the noise.

And by “hell” I, of course, mean Johnny Ringo’s at Ekka time.

The Valley’s boisterousness has been around longer than many of its residents have been there.Credit: Paul Harris

Data from Brisbane City Council shows Valley residents had the most aggrieved eardrums in the city across 2022-23, racking up 147 complaints to the council, well ahead of Coorparoo (133) and West End (124) among the 7199 across the local government area.

For the past four years, the Valley has featured in the top five suburbs for noise complaints.

While there would be legitimate grievances sprinkled among Valley’s share, you can bet a lot of them took offence at the suburb’s rowdy nightlife.

That is particularly clear when a deeper dive into the figures show most complaints came from within the designated Fortitude Valley Special Entertainment Precinct.

Thankfully, most of those complaints would have found their way straight to the bin, due to an almighty battle a couple of decades ago.

It all started with the Sun Apartments, at the corner of Brunswick and McLachlan streets. The building was once home to The Sun, Brisbane’s Murdoch tabloid that went under pretty much as soon as Rupert acquired The Courier-Mail broadsheet in 1987.

Developers moved in and converted the old newspaper building into apartments and it was not long before the monument to journalistic unemployment (gulp) became the epicentre of a stoush – established pubs, clubs and music venues on one side, and Johnny-come-lately Fortitude Valley residents on the other.

The Sun’s residents weren’t that enamoured with the noise coming from the adjacent Press Club, ironically enough named in The Sun’s honour. The interlopers won, and the Press Club pulled the plug on the music.

It was the thin edge of the wedge and, as the gentrification of the Valley rolled along, the beating heart of Brisbane’s thriving music scene faced an existential threat.

Enter David Hinchliffe, the local Labor councillor who famously served as deputy to LNP lord mayor Campbell Newman for four years, and industry group QMusic.

QMusic drew on a lot of the community activism it whipped up during its bid to save Festival Hall, a fight in which your humble columnist became enthusiastically involved (spoiler alert: we did not do so well).

With Hinchliffe on the inside in council, and the industry and music-loving community agitating from the sidelines, the campaign to save live music in the Valley was much more successful.

It led to the implementation of the Valley Music Harmony Plan, which relaxed noise restrictions and recognised the conflict between residents and venues should be settled simply by who there was first.

Residents could still complain about new venues that weren’t adequately soundproofed, while developers were also required to soundproof their new offerings. Then, it’s a case of buyer beware.

The subsequent Valley Special Entertainment Precinct was designed to protect the live music scene. It was rightly expanded in 2017 to include the Triffid, former Powderfinger bassist John Collins’ first big foray into the Brisbane live music venue scene.

The 2019 arrival of Collins’ other passion project, the Fortitude Music Hall, shows the VSEP is doing its job. Long may the music play.

As a Valley resident, I’m very aware of how annoying a bit of yahooing and heavy bass can be when you’re trying to get to sleep.

But that venue across the road, with its DJ sets and happy hour shenanigans, was there long before I was.

And that absolutely forfeits my right to complain.