Reaching to the Sky

I'm sitting on the top floor of the KG QUT library looking out across the cityscape and I'm struck with a kind of reverence.

I like the way this city is built. We have a cluster of skyscrapers (slowly encroaching on the sky with the Aurora building this year reaching 207m) weaved through by the river and surrounded by belts of medium density living. The suburbs expand out to the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Ipswich (which I don't like so much - mostly because of the diminishing greenbelts). From here we are surrounded by the Mt Gravatt Hills and the tip of the D'aguilar's that ends at Mt Cootha. The city itself is cocooned in a valley filled with green patches.

I keep wanting to get a picture of the inner city, without cranes atop buildings, you know in a static state. But that's part of the reverence and the realisation - the cranes are a part of the city. They move and change and reach into the sky, both to raise attention to themselves and also as an act of homage. You can't get a static image of Brisbane because it's always changing.

And you can't stand from outside looking in because in it's own way it's become embedded in the landscape. Standing atop Mt Cootha or from the hill on Bennetts Road, or here on campus, you can't look and say there is Brisbane, the city, because the city exists around you as well.

Hmm. Place and Space and embeddedness.