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| A scene from the 90s movie 'Fortress' |
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| A scene from the Queensland made movie 'Fortress' |
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| A scene from season 4 episode 6 of 'The Crown' |
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| The Crown: Terra Nullius |
I've always considered myself an Australian who just happened to be born in Queensland and who loves the state of New South Wales just as much as the state I was born in.
I've always seen the "State of Origin" matches with the sales slogan of "State vs State, Mate vs Mate" as PR carnival barking BS.
I used to be a neutral spectator in the early days of the series, but a few ugly incidents involving players from the team I'd followed since I was a young boy, the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks, convinced me this "State vs State" stuff was just a load of bullfrogs, and being a bit of a rebel, I chose to wear the blue of New South Wales every year from then on.
To me the state borders of Australia meant nothing when growing up.
As far as I was concerned, I was an Australian first and last, not someone from Queensland or New South Wales.
I'd like a dollar for every time I've crossed the Queensland/New South Wales state border in my lifetime, as I'd be a rich man now.
I never thought I'd ever live to see that border become a hard border like some communist borders in old Europe.
And while I get the seriousness of the pandemic, here we are in 2020 with the border being closed to the Australian southerners for most of the year.
And I remember back in March 2020 being confined to my Logan suburb, unless I wanted to be fined a lot of money for making non-essential trips out of my suburb, unless I had a good excuse for leaving my suburb ... like voting [?!].
I didn't realize until reading up on the movie 'Fortress' for this post that the director Stuart Gordon passed away in March, 2020.
The Secrets of the Soul’s Journey Through Life?
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| Seems to be plenty of prison drama around in lock-down:-) |
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| I see Chris Hemsworth is filming on the Gold Coast now |
Anyway, I've spent 2020 in my home state of Queensland where my immediate family all live, and I've had to shelve my plans I had at the beginning of 2020 of doing another road-trip, this time along the Great Ocean Road to South Australia and back.
Maybe 2021, fingers crossed?
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| The magazine that the red bridge article was in |
Gold Coast, more or less.
The only traffic the old bridge has go across it nowadays is bike and pedestrian traffic.
Hopefully the Queensland/New South Wales border stays open now and the Covid 19 stays out of Australia, and I can enjoy a 2020 Christmas down on the Gold Coast at my sister's place with the rest of my family.
Luke, #11 and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on Byron Time?
Go Take Another Hike Hemsworth!-)
Star Wars Actor Andrew Jack Dies Aged 76 of Corona-virus?
Logan has an unfair reputation as a crime riddled area full of lower-class no-hopers, an opinion I see mainly coming from people living in Brisbane, who like to feel better about where they live, it seems.
The Garret: Writers on Writing - At Home with Trent Dalton
Magic Words and the Power of Language?
Oddly enough, Trent's novel 'Boy Swallows Universe' starts off by mentioning an infamous prisoner from a notorious old Brisbane jail who baby sat Trent as a boy and taught Trent how to drive:-)
My father was a cab driver for most of his life and that was the only cars my father drove or owned when I lived with him as a boy growing up in Brisbane, so if we had to go on a family road-trip out of Brisbane or day trip around through the streets of Brisbane, it was always in a taxi cab, which to me was embarrassing.
In fact, on a recent podcast I heard Trent Dalton tell the interviewer who lives in Melbourne that the suburb of Bracken Ridge in the 80s where Trent grew up was like what Logan is today socioeconomically.
You might want to take a look at just how big the city of Logan is Trent I think before you go saying that again?-)
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| The LOGAN magazine that the red bridge article was in |
My father was a cab driver for most of his life and that was the only cars my father drove or owned when I lived with him as a boy growing up in Brisbane, so if we had to go on a family road-trip out of Brisbane or day trip around through the streets of Brisbane, it was always in a taxi cab, which to me was embarrassing.
But hey, beggars can't be ...
Anyway, I was reading a Logan council magazine this year and saw an article about the old bridge we would cross in dad's cab on family trips to the Gold Coast and back when I was a kid.
That bridge was part of the old one lane each way highway before the modern-day Pacific highway bypassed the old bridge.
I remember a scene from the movie 'Fortress' was filmed on that bridge in the early 90s, so I was keen to check the bridge out after reading that article.
And last weekend when heading to a family get together at my sister's place on the Gold Coast, I asked my youngest son who was driving me, to stop at the red bridge so I could snap a few shots of the bridge.
Although you can still drive a boat under the old bridge if you like.
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| My sister and a few of my family members at her place |
I wish you all a Merry Christmas this year, too ... and hopefully a Happy New Year for us all in 2021 ... not that I can see it from here in 2020 though:-(
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