I'm sitting in Rick's Cafe thinking about Big Themes. On the monitor away to my right Humphrey drawls to Ingrid (tight close up): 'Here's looking at you, kid,' and I realise that Warner Brothers' Movie World is Queensland essentialised. Movie World is obsessed with police, guns and horses, fast American cars, Asian-style violence, exotic romance and larger-than-life characters. As is Queensland.

I sit in this cafe and bar -- an actual building constructed to celebrate a cafe and bar which never existed except as a Hollywood filmstage set. The ceiling-fans push back the Moroccan desert heat. The song gets played again and again. There's a plane due soon on the video to take away those who cannot stay.

The Departure Syndrome
I came to Queensland eighteen years ago, wrote my first novel, then left. Seven years later I returned, and stayed.

This is not the normal pattern for a writer's relationship with the Sunshine State. Most such relationships end in a complicated divorce, as the Astley/Davidson/Hospital/Malouf/Scott/Shapcott/Wright experiences show. It's a recognised syndrome in Australian writing: the earlier nurturing years in Queensland, the maturing tensions and literary frustrations, the eventual escape to other states, other parts of the world, away from the turmoil and madness. The divorce for these writers looks permanent; the relationship continues to haunt several of them years after the split; only some are still on good speaking terms with Queensland.

Bare Feet
When I was a kid growing up in Sydney, my mother told me about Queensland. She lived there for a time during her childhood, staying with an aunt in the Brisbane suburb of Ascot. My mother probably told me many things about Queensland, but I chose to remember one feature: it was the place where you didn't have to wear shoes to school.

This conjured up a big vision for me: schoolrooms full of the susurration of bare feet on floorboards; assembly lines gently rhythmic with the slow dance on hot asphalt; playing fields alive with the soft thunder of skin on dirt.

Queensland constructed itself as a free and easy place. To a child whose first act after coming home from school each day was to throw off his shoes and school socks, Queensland seemed the ultimate environment for an education. I grew up with no fear of Queensland. I didn't know or care about diseases you can contract throught the soles of your feet, rusty nails sticking up in boards, oyster shells, snake bites, etc.

The Mythic Journey
The Mythic Journey of Southern Australian Youth is a phenomenon which has been in existence for more than a quarter of a century. It involves teenagers in Sydney and Melbourne (and elsewhere in the southern states) getting away from their parents and siblings to take a rite-of-passage holiday in Surfers Paradise.

I undertook the Mythic Journey in 1966, at the age of sixteen. It was my first trip to Queensland and -- so I thought at the time of setting out -- my first trip to manhood and independence and welcome wildness.

I went with my cousin who was two years older than I. He had a driver's licence; he was of drinking age in New South Wales. We stayed in a dilapidated holiday house right on Coolangatta Beach. We were perfectly set up -- two boys hungry for the exotic pleasures Queensland had to offer.

We spent most of our time on the beach where Franquin the hypnotist (on a specially constructed scaffold) daily entertained sunbathers by calling for volunteers and making them do silly things under hypnosis. I went up on the scaffold, and was rejected. I can still feel Franquin's terse, dismissive grasp on my shoulder as he muttered under his breath (so that the PA system wouldn't broadcast his words to the entire beach): 'Get off'. I wasn't good hypnosis fodder.

So, within two days of arriving in Queensland I was cast down -- a supposed failure. Apparently I had the kind of brain that wouldn't submit. Years later I learnt the importance of such a brain for writing.

My cousin and I spent most of the rest of our time (and money) at a shop in the main street of Coolangatta. In this shop one could play at Scalextric mini racing cars (this is what the Gold Coast had before the Indy Grand Prix). The little models scorched around the track at speeds which, according to scale, were in the vicinity of the current straight-line world land speed record. I challenged my cousin endlessly, but to no avail. My car always spun out on the hairpin bends. I was a failure here too.

And, of course, we went to the inevitable dances to try to meet girls. On the way to one of these, a policeman on a motorcycle pulled us up. He told my cousin (who was driving) that he was exceeding the Queensland speed limit. I remember my cousin's response to the officer's statement (and my pang of fear as he said it): 'In my opinion, Sir, I wasn't going over sixty miles per hour.' The copper let us off with a warning; he obviously liked the 'Sir'.

At the dance we met a couple of girls. They too were from down South. They agreed to our taking them back to their holiday accommodation. My cousin and his girl went inside the upstairs flat, but I was left with the other girl on the staircase. She was a nice person (I apologise for not remembering her name) and from her I learnt much about the fortress dress sense of the 1966 Queensland-visiting Southern teenage female: the impenetrability of the padded bra, the guardianship of the girdle and the imperviousness of the pantyhose.

All in all, my Mythic Journey was an almost complete disaster. But I did get away with one thing. Being sixteen, I was an underage drinker in New South Wales, but I was even more so in Queensland where the legal age was twenty-one. I figured out a system, however: at nights I would dress in the suit I used to wear to Holy Communion in Sydney, then I would front up to the bars. It worked. Showing a reverence for XXXX akin to that required for the Blood of God, I was accepted years before my time into one of the holiest mysteries of Queensland.

Beautiful One Day, Developed the Next
Compare these two towns, these two histories. First, Queensland's oldest town:
Brisbane 1844. The Soldiers' Barracks. The Post Office. The Government Gardens. The Tread and Windmill. The Catholic Church. The Church of England. The Hospital. Wright's Hotel. Bow's Hotel. The Victoria Hotel. The Sawyer's Arms. The South Brisbane Hotel. The Lock-up. The Cemetery.

This is History as it used to be made.

Now, here's history as it's made today: Queensland's newest town: Robina 1997. A-mart, K-mart, Michael Hill Jeweller. Big Mac, Westpac, Brash's and Woolworths. Subway, Grannie May, Mitre 10 and Bi-lo. Jeans West, Best & Less, KFC and AMP and Crazy Clark's and Daewoo.

Robina, near Surfers Paradise, will be the second biggest city in Queensland. Its owner, Mr Robin Loh, an Asian billionnaire, says so. It's built on the principle of being one giant shopping mall. History isn't just made these days: it's malled.

Traditions
At Broadbeach, on the Gold Coast, there is a bora ring. It stands in a fenced-off park right beside the highway. When I say, 'right beside' I mean right beside. The footpath almost cuts off one side of it. If you kneel down and get the angle right, you can see the vague circular hump in the grassed, council-mown park. The site is so sacred only the Lions and Rotary Clubs are allowed to have their advertising signs in it. A brass plaque set in an imported rock officially marks the bora ring. The plaque has the Lord Mayor's and the Town Clerk's names on it. The text of the plaque thanks Aboriginal soldiers for fighting and giving their lives in two world wars.

Fairlie Does Queensland
Fairlie Arrow is the Joan of Arc of Queensland history. Her torment is central to any understanding of Queensland. Her experience provides an allegory for some of the fairly narrow views Queensland has of itself.

Fairlie was a lush, brassy singer of the early 1990s who thought she was ignored and wanted publicity -- just as Queensland has done over the years. So, like Queensland, Fairlie rigged her own kidnapping. She sent messages saying she was held against her will, tied down, treated badly, put upon, assaulted, dumped at the roadside.

It was all a put-up job. Fairlie sold her story and her nakedness to Penthouse magazine, and her raised, smugly-bondaged bottom was the last we saw of her.

I've Had My Chance
I had my chance, once, to spit on Joh. It was 1981 and Joh and Flo were riding at 1 a.m. in a little sulky pulled by a Shetland pony in Queen Street, the main thoroughfare of Brisbane. The street was empty. There was no one around. God knows what bizarre National Party function they had been to, but there they were, small as life, suddenly right in front of me, trotting sulkily in the early hours, with pasted grins on their faces. They came so close by me I could have spat on them squarely. But I didn't. I lost my chance.

The Whipping Side
In a Longreach disco I met a shearer who gave me a demonstration of shearing. As the techno pounded and the lighting system tested the possibilities between red and violet, the shearer explained to me the moves on the whipping side of the sheep. Then he turned the imaginary beast around and showed me the moves on the other side.

'What's that called?' I asked. 'The side opposite to the whipping side?'

The shearer looked at me in the coloured lights as if I were an idiot. 'It's not called anything,' he said. 'It's just "the other side".'

He continued his demonstration with the non-existent sheep between his thighs. I couldn't help being impressed. His hand and body movements were sheer ballet -- muscular and graceful. He danced his imaginary sheep to nakedness, to the multi-coloured `Doof, doof, doof' of the techno beat.

Even in the 1890s, they called the shearing of a sheep a 'disrobing'.

Pest Control
When I arrived in Brisbane in 1979 I went to see Parliament House. I couldn't get beyond the main gates because the entire building was dressed in a giant striped tent. This was an industrial artwork worthy of the wrap-up artist Christo. A security guard stopped me and said: 'The Queensland Parliament building is being fumigated.'

Health Services
There are terrific clinics in Queensland. The major services -- removal of cancers by the Philippino method, penis and breast enlargement, and sleep therapy -- are undertaken with a minimum 27% risk of staph infections. Australians from other states sell up their homes, leave their children and grandchildren, and fly to Queensland to die. It's a good place for it.

Ian Fairweather's Rats
Ian Fairweather, the internationally-acclaimed Australian artist, lived on Bribie Island, north of Brisbane. When he died, the local council bulldozed his house because of a rat infestation. In doing so, the council destroyed a national shrine and a potentially-lucrative tourist attraction.

Ian loved his rats. He fed and nurtured them. He preferred the rats to human visitors.

Beautiful One Day, Historic the Next
Compare these three towns:
The City of the Gold Coast 1997. This is a city without history, so they've made history. Michelangelo's David is available in the Raptis Plaza, a shopping mall. It's 100% bigger than the original. There's a statue of the Man from Snowy River in the Niecon Plaza, another shopping mall. Here Man and Horse are frozen, hell-bent on getting to McDonalds. The Australia Fair Shopping mall boasts several pieces of sculpture conserved and transported from torn-down buildings in Melbourne and Sydney. Some of these classic sculptures are dotted around the multi-level carpark (behind crash-fencing, of course).

Queensland knows the value of the historic.

Barcaldine, Central Western Queensland 1997. The famous tree under which the Australian Labor Party was formed in the 1890s is now not looking well. This is hardly surprising: it's full of concrete, to keep it standing.

Queensland knows the value of living history.

Winton, Central Western Queensland 1997. The site of the famous 1890s shearers' camp -- a place of revolt and attitude and political identity -- is several miles out of town, almost unmarked, unheralded. The low scrub is gnarled and spiky, the outback winds scour the dark yellow earth. You can still see the rows of ochre pebbles outlining the tent sites. You can pick up broken bottles, the kind that had marbles in their necks. It's all still there -- the tension, the voices, the ghosts, the nation-forging -- right on the outback surface.

Queensland knows the value of history, it recognises its big themes. At Winton, no one visits the shearers' camp. Tourists prefer the road in the opposite direction, towards the Crocodile Dundee pub.

Government, Judiciary and Police Statistics
In the past ten years four Queensland government ministers have gone to gaol. So too has one Queensland police commissioner and one judge. Also, a constable, the best-known face in the Queensland Police Force, star of children's television and police public relations school visits, went to gaol for child molestation.

Hanouf and the West End Traffic Lights
My favourite restaurant in Brisbane in the early 1980s was Hanouf's Lebanese eating house in the West End (an inner city suburb). When Hanouf decided to expand, he knocked out a wall and exposed the electrical box that operated the set of traffic lights at the main West End intersection.

This caused problems. For many months (while the Brisbane City Council decided what to do) diners at Hanouf's ate falafel and hommous with the traffic lights box clicking and fizzing between tables.

Big Business and the Arts
Eminent ex-smoker and ex-Melburnian, Christopher Skase, knocked out the floor between two storeys of a Brisbane city office block. He wanted a giant staircase to lead grandly right up to his office. The staircase, in rising, was flanked by priceless antiquities -- a couple of Greek busts here, a Roman torso further up. The stairs culminated at a receptionist's desk. Out of the desk flowed a waterfall -- real water, not a mirage -- splashing all the way back down again. Plumbing is one of Queensland's major arts.

Keystone Cops at Petrie Terrace
Petrie Terrace is an inner-city suburb of Brisbane. It looks down on a major city feature -- the railway yards. I lived there for a time in the early 1980s. One day I looked out the window and saw a line-up of parked police cars right in front of my flat. I also saw a group of police (male and female) standing on the footpath with handguns unholstered.
'Lock the doors,' I shouted to my partner.
I watched as the Queensland police raided our building, guns naked. They rattled around in the stairwell, banged on doors and shouted. Then I saw them regroup on the footpath out front, laughing.