I keep coming back to the light of Brisbane. If you are born into it,
this palette of gentle pinks and oranges at dawn and dusk, the blast
white of midday in summer, the lemon luminescence of mid-morning and
mid-afternoon, you keep it with you, and measure all other light by it.
If you live away from it, then step back into it, it is the first thing
that tells you you're home.
Brisbane reveals a city of wooden houses where mango trees abound, where
the serpentine river seems to be of the city and yet somehow not, where
ghostly memories of demolished landmarks like Cloudland and The Bellevue
Hotel hover and where the chime of the City Hall clock echoes through
time and place.
Taking readers on a unique personal journey, Matthew Condon unearths the
city's history - sometimes literally - and paints a portrait of
transformation from a sleepy capital city that's more like a big country
town, to a vibrant, confident place, but one where time can still move
slowly.
In a new epilogue, Condon returns to the house he grew up in; standing
and looking out from the verandah, the past collides with the present,
but the view is as he remembers it.
'...a beautifully produced guide to the city that also evokes the soul
of the place and establishes the historical context.' - The Brisbane
News
'Dismayed, enmeshed and enchanted by Brisbane, he has added himself to
the long line of its eccentric rhapsodists.' - Peter Pierce, The
Canberra Times
'One of the finest writers of his generation...Condon weaves forensic
examination of the city's ever-shifting history through intimate
personal recollections of his childhood perceptions of the place.' -
John Birmingham, The Monthly
