All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane

Half a dozen of my friends are moving away. When you say “half a dozen” in a sentence it doesn’t sound like so many, but that’s six relationships changing and yanking my heart in far-reaching destinations across Australia and around the globe. Even though I don’t see them all so regularly anymore, a greater distance between us feels like an irrevocable loss. I know if the friendships mean anything, we will stay in touch, and I’m certain we will. It’s just sad that the next stage of each of our lives shouldn’t necessarily be shared like our high school/uni days. And just to clarify, I have more than half a dozen friends (re: title). I’m just terribly witty like that and the sudden succession of jetsetting friends warrants exaggerations like “all” and “Nazi-loving Judas”.

My friend Maree (still living in Brisbane) mentioned that her mid-year trip to the US – her first international caper – awakened her to how BIG the world really is. I suppose I could never fathom it myself until I’ve spent 15 hours on a plane, overpassed the largest ocean, stepped on soil 12,000km from home, and integrated a new population with as busy lives, as dense histories and as unique cultural groups directly into my existence.

Brisbane is pretty small in the scheme of things.  Think of how often we see people we know when we’re out and about. I say ‘see’ because we don’t always stop and say hello to friends and polite acquaintances in public situations, do we? No one expects to be sited or likes to be encountered somewhere you’re not accustomed to seeing them – it’s very embarrassing for some reason. I can get quite awkward but gosh darn it; I can’t pretend you’re not there. Funny how you can instantly recognise someone’s frame from your peripheral vision but not realise the shelves they’re browsing contain toilet paper until you’ve called out their name... Strange enough, she took the upper hand. She furthermore exclaimed how extraordinary it was that we should run in to each other. Actually, former classmate, it’s hardly fancy to see me, here. It’s quite likely that I need to shop somewhere just like you. I suppose you do say things like “fancy seeing you” when caught buying toilet paper... because you’ve literally caught them and they need to be armed with a generic phrase to seem relatable again. After all, you’ve just discovered they poop and who can relate to that? I would have liked to have cracked, “Big night ahead?” but like I said, she had more idioms to offer and hence the upper hand.

The Last Picture Show (1971):
Filmed on location in Archer City, TX

Contemplating these frequent run-ins and the trend of friends who seem to have outgrown this city, I’ve started viewing Brisbane as a small town in the Deep South or mid-West. You know the kind I’m referring to. The kind of town with latticed apple pies cooling on window sills; the kind where your next door neighbour is the deputy sheriff; the kind where the mayor, barber and owner of the bowling alley are one and the same person; the kind where you exchange stories of “spooked” horses at a bar at three in the afternoon; the kind of town you love but know you can do better than, and desperately want to flee.

First you must escape your widowed father’s guilt, then your job wiping windscreens at the gas station, then your high school sweetheart who is determined to revive his family’s failing beet farm, and finally the dusty backward town itself. It’s a good thing you have the support of that tired spinster waitress at the diner and of that unwashed hermit, possible murderer and proven cabbage patch saboteur living in a shanty by the swamp, who, in actuality, is a really kind and misunderstood old man.



The Dark Knight (2008): Bank Robbery scene

 So when, you ask, do I plan to escape the little rustbucket that is Brisbane? I’m aiming for this year – definitely this year – even if I have to hijack a school bus and crash it into a bank to rip off and kill William Fichtner.

That is to say, I’ve struggled to save enough in the past – but I think I can now realise my dream to escape my hometown just to pass through crappy small towns that I’d want to escape if my life was a movie. Taste that irony? As finger-licking-good as Laverne’s cherry pie (the tired spinster waitress I will befriend).

My inspiration to road trip America came about after watching a Russell Brand TV special. Brand and his friend and radio co-host Matt Morgan specially set out to follow the roads travelled in Jack Kerouac’s novel On The Road. Despite the sobreity of the UK tourists, I found Brand and Morgan's trek a little more colourful than that of the novel's trippin' roadtrippers. It took me three attempts to finish On The Road, because yes, it could be dull – but also because I start and quit books like a Hollywood marriage.



Breakdown (1997): Kathleen Quinlan is kidnapped and
held for ransom of 90,000 donuts.

The book’s modelled on Kerouac’s own misadventures. His alter-ego protagonist, Sal, is a writer from New York who leaves his sad wife and sad life to cross the many plains of America with his erratic buddy, Dean Moriarty. Drugs, sex and pick up trucks. How romantic, I think, to hitchhike. I’d to like to do it at least once, but my gap-tooth and bony wrists scream “I’m vulnerable! I'm naive! And I’d be the perfect addition to your secret cellar!” I should like to travel with a stoic male like Sal because that would be much more safe – Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan would agree.

Yes; New York, San Francisco, Washington and New Orleans all seem wonderful to me. The history, the culture, the architecture, the food and entertainment! But on an even keel of anticipation and riotous shenanigans, there’s Brownsville, Oregon.



Keifer Sutherland and River Phoenix in Stand By Me (1986); Phoenix overdosed outside the Viper Room in 1993.



Brownsville is the town where Stand By Me was filmed. Just to think, I could be walking on the very pavement Kiefer Sutherland pummelled River Phoenix’s face into. I guess there’s always the pavement outside the Viper Room too.

I looked up Brownsville on Google Maps with Tom (my brother and reluctant friend; still living in Brisbane) and to our surprise and delight, the town’s 50s quaintness and simplicity seems to have been snaplock-sealed and refrigerated for consumption by today’s nostalgic youth. And unlike the time capsule I buried and hoped would be preserved with my friend Alishya (not living in Brisbane), it has not been mercilessly ravaged by a dog and/or flood water.



Bless Google Maps: Directions from Brisbane QLD to Brownsville OR
This route includes a ferry. (Useful: mode of transport)
This route has tolls. (Polite: pack spare change / gold bars / chickens)
This route crosses through Japan (Harmless observation or something else? Cautious of radioactivity? Inferring opportunities for environmental protest? Hm... Subtley played, Google.
Oh yeah, and worst directions ever.



The Great American Dream

The fantasy I’ve cast myself in consists of an idle, arm-out-the-window drive down the main drag in an old Chrysler convertible (rental) with a mix tape of Ben E. King distorting through the shot speakers. Then, if I were so inclined (and a dude), I’d stop in for a cut-throat shave. My liberal beliefs in racial and gender equality, fabric softener and the necessity of dance would probably see me run swiftly out of town by locals toting pitchforks and blazing torches.

By golly, I can’t wait to escape Brisbane just to escape a shithole like Brownsville.

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If you enjoyed reading this blog and would like to vicariously escape a small cruddy town, I would recommend watching: The Night of the Hunter, East of Eden, The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, Empire Falls, Hud, Stand By Me, Mississippi Burning, Footloose, My Cousin Vinny, American Graffiti and possibly All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane (which I have not seen).