Where else but Queensland?

Though we protest the sniping and snobbery of our southern friends, there’s no denying Queenslanders have always relished their inherent underdog status. From Cape York to Coolangatta, maroon blood flow througheth our veins. Unsurprisingly, Queensland is better known for its cauliflower-eared State of Origin behemoths than its world leading creative industries princincts and unique emerging cultural scene.

To quote columnist Michael Hodges of Time Out, grey old inner London "is a perfect place for the miserable … [but] it's being miserable that gets things done. No one comes to the capital to be happy. They come here to do stuff."

This idea is reinforced by psychology Professor Joe Forgas's recent work at the University of NSW, which suggests not only that grumpiness can enhance cognition but also that grey, rainy weather improves memory and acuity, while sunny weather encourages forgetfulness.

In other words, there's what feels nice, and there's what gets stuff done.

This may help explain why Melbournian culture is traditionally more fertile than that, shall we say, of sunnier climes. It may also explain why a modicum of repression seems historically to act as a creativity enhancer. Take that, self-congratulatory southern cities!

Queensland is considered one of the world’s most beautiful tourism destinations and it isn’t difficult to understand why. Unfathomable stretches of mysterious, untouched tropical wilderness lie just beyond our back fences and the Pacific Ocean softly caresses our feet while we dig our toes into creamy-white sand and bask in the dreamy kiss of that old seductress in the sky, 300 days a year.

It’s ironic then, that the root of the “banana bending bogan” stereotype we so vehemently deny lies in the very things that make the Sunshine State such a desirable holiday destination today.

Let’s be honest. Only here would an 18-year-old university student be infamously bashed by police, hospitalised, then charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest only to go on to become one of the state’s best loved and longest serving premiers. Even the genetic mastery demonstrated by our own Miss Universe Rachel Finch wasn’t enough to distract Australia’s media from the beauty’s distinctly nasal northern twang - enough to make even the cheese-eating pageant circle cringe. Where else but Queensland, ay?

- snippet from Metropolis Metamorphosis (Lara Lavers for FROCK PAPER SCISSORS 2010/11)