Des Houghton: Why I’ve joined the ranks of inner-city elites

Joining the ranks of baby boomers enjoying the parks and delights of the city centre is a pleasure, writes Des Houghton.

I sold the lawnmower and said goodbye to Brisbane’s western suburbs where I lived for half a century.

I have new lodgings by the river near Oxford Street, Bulimba, Queensland’s longest dog urinal.

Quite by accident I have found myself living in a nouveau neighbourhood where fluffy dogs are fashion accessories and where I am within walking distance to a proper bookshop, a cinema, two parks, a library, restaurants, a gift shop, a bottle-o, a micro-brewery, a golf course, and a sailing club.

Gosh, I have a terrible feeling I have become one of Steven Miles’s dreadful inner-city elites.

And I regret to tell you Mr Miles, but many more inner-city elites are on the way as ageing baby boomers tire of the burbs.

The Oxford St Ferry Terminal. Picture: Annette Dew

My new abode is within walking distance of five or six decent restaurants, and a bakery and cake shop called Darvella Patisserie which doubles as a boulangerie where I get baguette, bread, French pastries and caffè latte. Nor far away is the Revel Brewing Co, which has an ordinary but pleasant enough beer garden to sip cold beer and devour the best pizza in Queensland bar none.

However, newcomers quickly realise the epicentre of cultural life in Bulimba is Il Molo, a lively Italian restaurant with impeccable service where I set up “office” with notebook and pen two or three times a week.

There, Allesandro takes me to my favourite table and brings me a caprese salad with a runny burrata or perhaps the Mooloolaba prawn linguine or the pesce all’acqua pazza, red emperor poached with tomatoes and fennel and garlic. Il Molo, (Italian for The Pier), also has outstanding pizza. All it needs is a better wine list.

Bulimba speaks volumes about Brisbane, old and new. In bygone days it was a gritty working-class suburb with slipways, brickyards, meat processing, chemical manufacturing, a candle and soap factory, and an oddball goanna oil factory. Now it is the face of New Brisbane.

The arrival of nouveau neighbourhoods in locations as diverse as Rosalie, Windsor, West End, Fortitude Valley, Woolloongabba and Everton Park are now defining “liveable Brisbane” in my mind just as urban sprawl did in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

CityFerry 'Kalparrin' crossing Brisbane River from Teneriffe to Bulimba Ferry Terminal. Picture: Richard Walker

Who would have thought that Everton Park, once insufferably dreary, would now have the New Brisbane vibe with restaurants, Melbourne-style laneways and the best suburban delicatessen and greengrocer outside of West End?

Revitalised suburbs like Everton Park are leaving tired old New Farm for dead.

Since my lucky escape from Ashgrove I rarely go by car anymore.

I’m close to the heritage-listed Bulimba ferry terminal built in 1922 in the Federation Queen Anne style like several old homes I see on the riverbank on my voyages to town.

The City Cats take me just about anywhere in the city I want to go from Northshore Hamilton to the University of Queensland and points between.

There is music on the water. We disembark at South Bank for a pleasant stroll through the parkland to the performing arts centre to hear the glorious Queensland Symphony Orchestra.

This week I got off at South Bank again to return an overdue book to the state library and go on to meet old newsroom comrades at the Gallery of Modern Art bistro on the river. Great setting, shame about the food. Or I might hop off the Cat at the Riverside Centre in Eagle Street and walk to my club Tattersalls, in Queen Street, as I did on Tuesday.

New Brisbane is also being defined by its splendid parks. City Hall under Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner has made parks a priority.

They are a sanctuary for people living in apartments and an escape for suburbanites.

I didn’t appreciate the popularity of the parks until I took the City Cat to New Farm park on the weekend to be greeted by a thousand rose bushes.

The place is a mecca for inner-city elites and other family groups who spread picnic blankets and drink in the springtime.

There are in fact 2100 rose bushes in bloom at the park, Vicki Howard told me.

That’s about 7000 individual roses, said Howard, the chair of Brisbane City Council’s community, arts and nighttime economy committee.

And more roses are arriving every day.

Flowers in New Farm Park.

See them in all their glory this month and early October next thanks to the council’s rigorous winter pruning program.

“This spectacular display won’t last for long,” she said.

Roses were first planted there in 1914 and completely replanted after the 1974 floods, Howard said. Classical varieties on show now include the Iceberg, Playboy, Peace and Mister Lincoln.

“The New Farm Park rose garden was established more than 100 years ago, and has survived some of Brisbane’s historical weather events, including heatwaves and flooding.”

There are more than 100 jacaranda trees about to burst into bloom.

Schrinner points to the completion of the Hanlon Park rejuvenation project at Stones Corner, which he says is emblematic in defining Brisbane’s liveability status.

It is once again a natural waterway with a nature-themed play area, picnic shelters and pathways.

For 100 years it was a massive, ugly open concrete drain. Now it has a climbing tower, sandpit, water pump, swings and slides.

It’s one of a number of new or upgraded parks including Warril Parkland in Larapinta, Grinstead Park, Alderley, Kangaroo Gully Park, Bellbowrie, Sandgate Foreshores Park, Sandgate, Wishart Community Park, Wishart and Primrose Park in Wynnum.

Bradbury Park at Kedron is a special escape from suburbia. It’s billed as a playscape and has a series of towers called hollows linked by bridges called byways.

It looks like a theme park.

For me, the whole of Brisbane has suddenly become a theme park by the water.