Last November, Brisbane hosted a meeting of G20 leaders in the midst of a spring heatwave. The CBD and the high-density residential area around the venue — largely occupied by professionals and students, with a sprinkling of bohemians — was in ‘lockdown’. Residents accustomed to walking and cycling on the riverside were denied access, and movement in and out of the zone was restricted. Security arrangements for Barack Obama were the subject of fascination for the media and locals, while pictures of Chancellor Angela Merkel mingling with drinkers at a popular bar in Caxton Street on the city fringe went viral. In their account of the way government enacted legislation to meet anticipated security threats and of the strategies police used on the ground, Tim Legrand and Simon Bronitt recall an earlier Queensland history. Although the G20 Safety and Security Act 2013 conjured the spectre of the Bjelke-Petersen regime's ban on public assembly, and set aside the Goss legacy of the Peaceful Assembly Act 1991, this time the story was different. Despite the massive police presence, officers’ interactions with protesters were civil and the protests peaceful, as our cover image shows.
Patrick Buckridge's essay on a ‘virtual’ book club, centred on the Rockhampton-based paper, The Capricornian, and its literary editor, Andrew Dunn, is also a study in the production of civil interactions through ‘book talk’. Dunn cultivated a group of ‘bush philosophers’ whose observations on their leisure pursuits — reading, nature study — were a means of creating a virtual community, or what David Malouf has called an ‘invisible company’ of readers.
Peter Griggs’ article on street beautification across Queensland between the wars offers insights into early twentieth-century urban planning. The remnants of these planners’ visions for shaded streets, parks and avenues that provided amenity and in some cases commemorated the war dead, are still visible in many places.
Tree planting was not confined to urban streets. As the importance of holiday-makers who travelled by car to Queensland was recognised, plantings also occurred on highways and around seaside resorts. In North Queensland, tourism centres on the Barrier Reef, and much of the support for the G20 derived from the promised benefits to this important industry. The G20 finance ministers met in Cairns, and some delegates stayed on the Gold Coast. Celmara Pocock describes early tourist development on the Molle islands through an examination of the papers of Henry George Lamond — who was something of a reluctant publicist for the attractions of South Molle, because he didn't like tourists!
Mary Poppins has lately become part of the new interest in cultural tourism. Her birthplace in Maryborough is the centre of an annual festival, and in New South Wales the book town of Bowral claims that her famous children's story was conceived there. But Pamela Travers liked to pretend she was English, and worked hard to conceal her Queensland origins. Sharyn Pearce examines the recent revival of interest in Mary Poppins. Her account of the film Saving Mr Banks shows how the making of the ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ hit installed Disney as the creator of the magical nanny, and sidelined Travers as a tetchy, snobbish Englishwoman.
Jessica Gildersleeve and Suzie Gibson both read Queensland writing through a wider lens. In ‘Ropes of Story’, Gildersleeve shows how the influence of Jean Rhys figures in the work of Melissa Lucashenko and Vivienne Cleven. Gildersleeve also insists that ‘listening’ to stories is a responsibility and a challenge for readers of Indigenous writing. Suzie Gibson offers a reading of David Malouf's Johnno that sets it alongside Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. Gibson emphasises the correspondences between Malouf's sensory evocation of Brisbane and Calvino's watery imagined cities. This essay is the first in an occasional series of re-readings of classic Queensland texts.
This issue also sees another new feature: an account of important and interesting collections and archives that offer resources for researchers. We begin with Fryer Librarian Simon Farley's description of the acquisition of the Xavier and Sadie Herbert papers. The Herberts lived for a long time in Redlynch, near Cairns, where a street is now named for Xavier.
