source : the age
If it wasn’t for the Greenslopes KFC on Logan Road no one would know where I live.
I’ve always been a southside kinda girl, growing up in Mt Gravatt with a view of the mountain as backdrop to most of my childhood memories.
But after stints away working interstate, and then returning to the city where I grew up, it was time to find a new place to call home. Close enough to the ageing parents, but not too close. And close to work, so the around-the-clock shifts at ABC South Bank could be reined in and not overtake our lives.
We soon realised any prospect of getting a house that close to the city was beyond our mere journo budget, but we found a little flat at Greenslopes that ticked all the other boxes.
It’s a fascinating little pocket of Brisbane: a boundary with a suburb problem that runs simultaneously in two lanes – one of rampant construction and change, and the other of quaint country-style houses just off major roads.
Being so close to the city, it’s attracted a diverse clientele too. Once we established which side of the somewhat contested boundary we lived on between Greenslopes and, well, anywhere else really, we enrolled our son at Greenslopes State School. He grew up there, surrounded by children from dozens of different cultures.
One local tradition we were lucky to be part of every year was the annual Greenslopes State School Anzac Day parade. My father is a veteran of the Borneo confrontation (1963-66, look it up), but when I was growing up he told me never to tell anyone. He never marched, or acknowledged the day as such, or wanted to talk about what happened there. He said just to tell people he went to Vietnam, as it was easier.
But once my son Ronan came along, that all changed. Greenslopes State School invites members of the Holland Park Returned Services League alongside parents and grandparents to be a special part of their Anzac Day commemoration ceremonies. Children as young as four sing the Australian and New Zealand national anthems, or walk two by two out to the school’s shrine of remembrance, holding their heads low while cradling a little candle or posy to place there.
Once the school knew of Dad’s war service, he became a special guest every year at the Anzac ceremony. And they’ve continued that tradition even after Ronan went onto high school, asking them to return every year. Given a seat at the front of the ceremony with his medals on, Dad sits proudly alongside his grandson, and other serving parents and grandparents of this small school community.
It’s a marvellous tribute to the war history of the area that the school reflects so well.
You can see the Greenslopes Hospital from the school gates, the place so many people to this day still refer to as the Defence Hospital, still standing sentinel on its hilltop. The then-military hospital opened in 1942 just as Australia was fighting for its survival, with its first patients arriving from battlefronts in the Pacific, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. To this day, the Gallipoli Medical Research centre there is known internationally for its work specialising in veteran health.
When I think of Greenslopes it’s that wonderful cultural hot pot that comes to mind for me. You see it in the local Greenslopes Mall, in the popular little eating spots ranging from Lalaland Cafe and Korean restaurant, to Persian at Taste of Saffron, Mr Noodle, Uncle Lai’s Malaysian fare and Souffle Japancakes. And you even see it in places like the Women’s Creative Centre at the mall that’s been going for half a century while the suburb evolves around it.
The Jam Pantry cafe is beloved to Greenslopians. Now under the guiding hands of Victor Chan and his wife Stephanie, who took it over in 2020 and kept all the staff on board despite the challenges that COVID threw at them, it continues the great Greenslopes tradition of evolution while preserving what we love.
We came to Greenslopes for its location so close to the city, while still flying a bit off the radar unlike its close-to-town cousins like West End and Highgate Hill, as well as the proximity to the freeway that slices through our city like a bread knife. But we’ve ended up loving it for more than that.
After 12 years getting to know our favourite nooks and crannies, and while debate still runs hot on whether Stones Corner really is a suburb and where its boundaries with Greenslopes start and end, we love our little pocket of southside Brisbane life.
Despite its constant transformation and reinvention Greenslopes hasn’t lost its sense of history – seen in little touches like the shire’s old name on a plaque on the bridge where Juliette Street crosses Norman Creek, or the mural on Logan Road outside Greenslopes State School painted by students in 1990 to celebrate the school’s centenary, and detailing in picture form the colourful history of the area.
And if you’re ever wondering how to explain where Greenslopes is? Just tell people it’s near the KFC on Logan Road. Not sure what gave it this universal understanding, but you’ll get nods of approval every time you mention it.
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