On bogans and being the butt.
Brissos are tired of the condescending way people from Sydney and Melbourne scoff and generalise about Brisbane and assume Brissos are unsophisticated.
Brissos know that those parochial arrogant folk from Sydney don’t realise how much Brissie has changed in the last ten years. They don’t realise it has good coffee, farmers markets, and restaurants, real estate, and city parking as prohibitively expensive as Sydney. It also has the GOMA which has world class exhibitions like Andy Warhol and Picasso.
As if to prove their sophistication to southern snobs and to each other, Brissos never tire of scoffing and generalising about Ipswich and Logan, and other cities or locales Brisbane is forced to rub up against. Brissos use an ironic, sing song tone of voice for these place names and all they stand for:
“Ipp” ( voice rising) “switch” (down)
“Red…. Cliff”
“Low ….gan”
“Bri…bie”
as if mimicking the thick people that come from these parts. Brissos prefer not to go to the Ekka, Riverfire, or anything at Southbank (see ‘Brissos and still water’) because they have to share them with these people.
Brissos don’t know exactly where the limits of their sprawling city are but are pretty sure they would know if they’d gone beyond them because they’d see bogans there. In fact they used to travel regularly through these places en route to fashionable holiday locations such as Noosa and Byron Bay. Thankfully, improved roads and bypasses have meant Brissos rarely have to encounter bogans any more, unless of course they need to leave the motorway to visit Ikea or take their child to play GPS sport at an inconveniently located playing field.
Indeed on Brisbane’s fringe there is often a fine line between an acceptable location for a Brisso to live and an unacceptable bogan location. For example a house on acreage in Pullenvale is priced at well over a million dollars, advertised as “executive lifestyle… room for a pony”. The same house and land, five minutes up the road in Karana Downs, Karalee or Goodna is “bargain acreage with plenty of room for your sheds, the tinnie, the truck, the kids, the dogs, the lot”.
Sometimes Brissos will have to visit someone they know through work at their home in such a location. Someone who moved from overseas or interstate and as such failed to understand the social geography here. They may say to their hosts “It really is quite nice out here”, with genuine surprise.
