Brisbane

And yes, you do not pronounce the a.

The moment I landed, I knew I was back. Moderate temperature, high humidity. Barely out of the plane, I am already sweating, and this fatigue drops over me like a damp cloth. Queensland, of course.

And there they are again, coming straight at me: those ridiculous stick figures on pale skin, moustaches, mullets. I have not missed them. Some women are no better, fine, no moustaches, but instead those awful tattoos and mullets. Why on earth would you cover your skin like that with decal motifs? Nothing coherent, hardly any colour, just badly done. It is not beautiful. My sense of aesthetics feels insulted. Well, not my skin.

It takes less than ten minutes and I am back on the ground of reality: into the train, out at Indooroopilly, a suburb of Brisbane, sweat.

As I said, they are not creative with street names. They are the same everywhere, as I have learned by now in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Adelaide. But the suburb names are where it gets interesting. Some still carry Indigenous names, real tongue twisters, and they are rarely pronounced the way they are written.

And besides the ever identical street names, the cities all come with the same building blocks: a natural history museum, a gallery and a gallery of modern art, free entry, a more or less usable public transport system that is likewise extremely cheap to almost free, a Royal Botanic Garden, often a square grid in the inner city, a migration museum, one or two universities, a few hospitals, two stadiums, an airport, a regional rail station, an entertainment district, and a casino. Et voilà: an Australian big city. Done. Clicked together like Civilization®.

I do not think I need to go to Perth to find out what it is like there. I do not even need to open Google Maps to know what it is like. It will not be dramatically different. Why? If you know four, you usually do not need to see the fifth. Maybe I am being unfair to Perth. Maybe not. I do not think so.

There are five population centres here with more than one million people: Greater Sydney, Greater Melbourne, Brisbane including the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, Perth, Adelaide. After that come Newcastle and Maitland, Canberra and Queanbeyan, Central Coast, Wollongong, and Geelong. The ten largest metropolitan regions together contain roughly three quarters of the population, just under 21 million people. The top five alone already account for almost 70 percent, around 19 million, on an entire continent. That is it. It is not going to get much more diverse than this.

For comparison: the Greater Tokyo Area with around 40 million, Mexico City with around 21 million, each at roughly 2,800 people per square kilometre. Australia, by contrast: a few million in a few cities, and around it, a whole lot of space, 2.3 people per square kilometre.

And everywhere it is the same: the same shops, the same chains, the same brands, the same white bread, the same sausage, the same Japanese cars. I was looking for colours to keep my little colourful stall of images going. No chance. Not possible. Not available. If I want certain colours, I have to import them. It is unbelievably monotonous.

And now I wanted to make a ranking of the cities here, which all function more or less according to the same design principle. For that I took another look at Brisbane today. I have been everywhere already, but I wanted to be sure I was not missing anything. No, I was not.

The natural history museum here: a small note about an Indigenous group with kinship ties to Papua New Guinea, small. A few dinosaur bones, a special exhibition on crocodiles, and then: stuffed animals, jars of formaldehyde, collections of specimens. Plus a mineral collection. Wow.

The only truly diverse thing, and for me actually misplaced in a natural history museum, is the exhibition about the LGBTIQ community scene in the nineties. Why it has to sit between dinosaur bones, no idea.

Then the gallery: nice architecture, modern, huge paintings, well placed. What can I say? Nice. And then the modern art: yes, also good. Nice.

I knew the building: last year’s Christmas party was on one of the balconies. And honestly it was one of the worst events I have ever been to. Badly done. Too much of everything and at the same time nothing. Fifty people getting lost on a huge terrace. Forced non casual. Only finger food. You keep waiting for proper food, but it never comes. An auto tune singer missing every other note. A lousy mood, tense all the way into the shoulders. The best thing was a photo booth where bad jokes were told, I will get to that at some point. And the worst: thirty degrees, humid, Christmas lights. That simply does not fit together in my head.

If there was a low point, it was that day. If there was a moment when I knew this cannot go on, it was that day.

The Christmas parties at the IAC glassblowing workshop with Martin and Tiger were worlds better. The guys could put away a lot. Those were the best Christmas parties. Greetings to Tiger, I hope he is still alive. Martin, sadly, is not anymore.

So. Now we have enough material for a ranking.

What really stands out in Brisbane is the city ferry. It is great, also because near the water the humidity does not dominate quite as much. In Adelaide it is the natural history museum, specifically because of the exhibition on Aboriginal Peoples. Those are the things you should do if you have to stop in either of these cities.

Then there are Sydney and Melbourne. And for me Melbourne comes out ahead. Queen Victoria Market. And with that we have a winner.

Whether Perth ends up before or after Brisbane and Adelaide in third or fifth place does not really matter. The gap is not big.

That is it for the metropolises. What is missing now is the country in between. In that spirit.