Can you go back to a city you lived in, and experience a similar life, she wonders.
You can return, but will it ever be the same, when both you and the place have changed, sometimes beyond recognition?
1980s
Brisbane of the night.
Lights twinkling along Coronation Drive.
Always the river, unchanging. Flying over it on The Riverside Expressway, only recently completed, super modern, easy access to the CBD.
Glamour and excitement, posh evening dresses. Out almost every night, invitations to art gallery and theatre openings, endless champagne, caviar snacks.
Nightclubs in the Valley, flaming sambucas, disco dancing till dawn, drunken hook-ups. Falling off the Regatta veranda, full of Bucks Fizz and laughter.
Car caught in a flooded street off the Ipswich motorway, still driveable, what luck.
Shopping in the Queen St Mall, dinner at Stefan’s Jo-Jo’s, the ultimate in sophistication.
Weekends at Noosa, before it got big.
Dinners at The Greek Club for Oysters Czarina, or the Paddo Tavern, the place to be. Ipswich? Where’s that?
Men in loose dark suits, white shoes. She wears smart suits with huge shoulder pads, big hair.
A burgeoning city, a large country town, coming of age for Expo 88, and a stage for early career success in her youth. Living and working in the inner west, she garnered her quantum of fame.
Life has never seemed so exuberant and easy.
Long, laughing, wine-fuelled lunches finishing at evening. The team debriefing and dissecting the programs, the guests, and world events.
Early rising at 4 never a problem when she was young.
Minister Russ, walking the ABC corridors like a tamed rhino, joking to her and her female producer that on such a lovely day, they should be buying frocks, not talking politics. Did he notice the smoke coming from their ears?
Cranes and new buildings, the smell of big money.
Rumours of potential corruption, soon to be proven.
Meeting that special one, falling in love, marrying in their western suburbs garden, heels sinking into wet grass.
Leaving the city, in search of greater success; never a thought for what was left behind. Or would never be again.
2000s.
Brisbane of the daytime.
Cars. More cars. Traffic, traffic jams.
Feeling like Rip van Winkle: had she fallen asleep for 15 years and just awoken? No, she had gone away, changed like a chameleon, moved interstate and overseas, and returned.
Hot, sweaty summers, flashing lightning and crashing thunder, torrential rains, scarlet poincianas and hot pink bougainvilleas, canary-yellow trumpet vines, once on every fence, now deplored as a weed.
Huge numbers of tall skyscrapers. Travelling in and out of the CBD takes two hours daily. Frustrations. Blockages on the Storey Bridge, queues on the Expressway, no more flying over the river, only crawling. The city vista gobbled up by skyscraper apartment blocks.
West End, where the poor once lived, gentrified; and those folks homeless, or pushed well out north, south, or west to Ipswich, less desirable suburbs.
Despite all indications, a stubborn sense that the 21st century might be better.
In mid-life, a new career, hard but rewarding, long hours, little glamour. Pleasure remains to be found in achievement, in success. Creating a brand to admire for city council.
She lives in Anstead first, later moves out to the country, seeking more peace than the outer suburbs.
Men in old, dark suits, dark shoes. She wore black or navy pants or skirts, executive uniform. Sweating in summer heatwaves. Living in units for weekday work, out to the country on weekends.
BBQ duck or curry in the Valley, a snatched sandwich or noodle bowl for frequent working lunches. No more long, boozy nights or endless lunches; working drinks at Jade Buddha at Eagle St Wharf, epitome of flashiness.
Preferring to shop in the suburbs, stay home on weekends rather than driving to the city. Rediscovering the Gold Coast, naff in the 80s, trendy again.
Planning for new highway tenders, helping community adjust to disruption in the search for freer traffic for a growing metropolis. Pulling all-nighters to get the bids done, huge disappointment when they lost.
City Cats, young kittens then, proud and shining, ploughing a trail to become icons.
And always the river, that ancient khaki snake twisting and sliding, changing its wriggle with floods and droughts.
2020s
Brisbane, night returning.
She travels from home in the country to the CBD for a rare evening event since retirement, staying at a hotel. No longer her city; just another tourist. Another twenty years, yet it feels like a month has passed.
Cranes and buildings going up everywhere, new stations tunnelled for the Cross River rail, construction hoarding cluttering the streets, changing the city’s shape. Unfamiliarity imposed on familiarity.
Men in slim-fitting dark suits with white-soled sneakers (and why always dark suits in a subtropical climate?) Women in frothy dresses, or business black suits, towering heels, or sneakers. It no longer matters what she wears.
She slowly wanders the almost empty streets at dusk (a legacy of plague?) and sits at Riverside.
Lights out now on Jade Buddha, and Eagle St Wharf, it’s slated for redevelopment. The city heart has moved on again, closer to Parliament and the old casino, and the plush, revamped wharves, as busy as they were 120 years ago, but with people, not freight.
Older City Cats pulling in at Riverside station, just another form of transport, no longer special. Instead, young people whizz by endlessly on e-scooters, today’s trendy transport.
And always the river, soft and sparkling in moonlight under the big, skeletal bridge, ageless and placid, but eager to bite out new banks when it rains.
Even hotter, sweatier summers. Laughing young people entering restaurants. You can eat the world these days, but the quality’s not much different.
Ipswich a desirable place to live. Cranes hovering, new tall buildings, the smell of easy money, the opposing stink of poverty rising from underground, like rats swimming up river. More homeless people camped under the eaves of the big bank on Queen St.
Rumours of political corruption.
The 21st century was not such a change.
She sits, motionless, watching the river, the eternal tide, feeling like an invisible ghost, remembering, remembering.
There are consolations in being a ghost. Hone your observations, listen to conversations. Watch, and see what others miss. You can return, she thought, but not really.
It was not the same place; she was not the same person.