source : the age
“McWhere?” people ask when I speak of my home of more than 20 years. We were barely aware of this suburb’s existence until we started house-hunting as our little family grew.
Our new suburb gradually filled with young families, settling into homes vacated by empty nesters. Surrounded by Stafford Heights, Bridgeman Downs and Chermside West (West Chermside in my day), McDowall is less than 10 kilometres from the CBD, but feels like 50 when you’re walking your dog through the bushy hills of the Raven Street Reserve.
Some folks boast their suburb is the beating the heart of the city, but what good is a heart without lungs? Leafy McDowall is a suburb with room to breathe.
I was gobsmacked when I spotted my first wallaby bouncing down our street, only to discover the green hills are alive with koalas, wallabies, possums, gliders, rakali (our own native otter), reptiles and more bird life than you can poke a stick at.
McDowall also has a darker past. In 2000, triple police shooter Nigel Parodi absconded into the Chermside Hills, sparking a massive manhunt. He was found weeks later, deceased. His victims all miraculously survived.
Both reserves are also the favourite refuge of stolen car joyriders who dump and run. The polite silence of the night is frequently interrupted by Polair circling the reserves in the infrared pursuit of automotive ne’er-do-wells.
A reserved transport corridor bisects McDowall north to south, a remnant of an abandoned 1960s freeway plan. Various proposals have surfaced over the years, but so far, they’ve come to nothing.
We remain a public transport black spot – a wedge of commuter sadness that has many residents driving to work or the nearest bus or train (the Ferny Grove line) into town.
This thickly forested corridor demarcates “Old McDowall” and “New McDowall”. Old McDowall nestles between the corridor and the Raven Street Reserve and is a network of streets named, delightfully, after film stars.
Whoever chose them had eclectic tastes. There are 1950s greats (Brando Street, Bardot Street, Ustinov Crescent), edgy 1970s actors (Hackman Street, Hoffman Street, Dunaway Street) and pop music legends (Jagger Street, Bassey Street, Sinatra Crescent). There’s even a Kidman Close and a Crowe Close.
I live in old McDowall, and we’re surrounded by all the Golden Age names: Keaton, Marx, Groucho, Chico and Harpo. As the namesake of a famous director, the irony is not lost on me.
My understanding was that Brisbane-born film star Diane Cilento (once married to Sean Connery, not happily) had parents who owned much of the land in McDowall. When the land was subdivided they thought it would be a nice tribute to their Oscar-nominated daughter to name the streets thus.
The internet, however, tells me it was instead the name of the Paramount Subdivisional Estate that inspired the names. Either way, there’s a Cilento Street next to the reserve.
Old McDowall has glamorous 1960s and 1970s architect-designed executive residences complete with sunken living rooms, shag-pile carpets and terrazzo in-ground pools.
To me as a Kedron boy raised in a rickety Queenslander, a brick house with internal stairs was a sign you’d made it: the homes of doctors, bankers and SP bookies.
Old-guard residents have regaled me with stories of Old McDowall’s promiscuous ’80s: tales of hot tub swinger parties, where partners and fondue recipes were regularly swapped. The only swapping done today is sourdough starter kits – as far as I know.
The patchwork of properties in McDowall is woven with regular-sized blocks as well as larger acreages. Developers brutally raze, rezone and replant these blocks with grey townhouses of questionable style, dimensions and affordability.
Much of the wildlife displaced from these properties has found its way to the bird-feeders in our garden: rainbow lorikeets, galahs, king parrots, pale-faced lorikeets, possums. We also have some of the largest carpet snakes this side of the Amazon.
McDowall is a vital link in the Mountains to Mangroves Corridor – a gossamer-thin wildlife corridor linking the D’Aguilar Ranges to Moreton Bay. It has a dedicated North Brisbane Catchments community group which lobbies local and state governments to protect the environment of this ecological gem of a suburb. They are currently fighting an uphill legal battle to preserve a vital koala habitat.
McDowall has a little shopping precinct with a Drakes IGA which seems to retain its friendly staff (g’day Bob!) and remains open when all the other chains are closed – making it the place to be seen on public holidays.
Twenty-something years since moving to McDowall, we’ve come full circle, and I realise we are now the empty nesters. Both our retirements are rapidly approaching, and when I’m not searching the interwebs for oceanfront, architect-designed beach shacks my more financially achievable search is for something just a bit smaller, on one level with less shag-pile – but still in McDowall.
In the meantime, my faithful dog glances from me to her lead, and back to me, and I know it’s time to lace up my hiking boots and head for the hills.
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John Hughes is a Brisbane-based graphic designer who tries not to take things too seriously.
