Queensland killed Georges Perec. It was one of the campus legends we heard as English undergrads at the University of Queensland. The legendary Ouilpian author of Life: A User’s Manual was, improbably, a writer-in-residence for a month in 1981. (For a more thorough, and undoubtedly accurate, account of Perec’s time down under see Peter Salmon’s fantastic article here.) Back then Queensland was still in the thrall of The Joke, the web of systematised police corruption that reached all the way to the Premier Joh Bjekle-Petersen. This was before the transformative troika of the Commonwealth Games, Expo ’88 and the Fitzgerald Inquiry let the sunshine in to the Murky State. Even the Great Court’s classical sandstone columns could elevate this big country town where men wore knee high socks and short shorts and devilled eggs passed for haute cuisine.

It wasn’t that Brisbane had no culture; rather, we produced artists and they left. We were enthusiastically proud of our music scene—the fact its bands played under the jackboot of a quasi-police state lent its punk rock wailings a scruff of authenticity. While they might have been ignored at home, the influence of The Saints and The Go-Betweens was felt across the globe. Nowadays there are prominent inner-city tributes to both bands. A quick jog from the (misnamed) Go-Between Bridge lands you next to a massive mural commemorating the derelict house where The Saints recorded the video for ‘(I’m) Stranded’, arguably the world’s first punk record. Self-exile is an essential part of each band’s mythology, and a key theme in Brisbane’s art. Because we perceive that nothing can happen here, everyone leaves. It was true of Peter Porter and Gwen Harwood, and it has been true for many of my friends. It is even at the heart of Brisbane’s ur-literary text, David Malouf’s Johnno, whose titular character snarls ‘This must be the bloody arsehole of the universe!’ Both Johnno and Dante, the narrator, were compelled to escape. While the narrator returns, the author did not.