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Memories of Cloudland
by Timothy Kelly
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 1957
My mate, Billy Blackburn can hardly recognise me in my Nasho uniform. He’s looking pretty pleased with himself in his Country Club shirt and Sixty Minute slacks. I’d be looking Ivy League too if I hadn’t been called up to do National Service.
We catch the tram from Adelaide Street and pass through the Valley. We are travelling down Breakfast Creek Road and Billy’s giving me a hard time about having to live out at the Wacol Barracks. I don’t mind; I’ve only got another month to serve. With a mischievous smile he raises his leg to reveal a hip flask in his sock. Knowing Billy, there’s also another one in his other sock. They’ll both contain gin as it mixes well with any of the legal drinks available at these Cloudland dances. We get off at the foot of Cintra Hill and board the funicula railway. It creaks and shudders as it’s hauled to the top of the hill by cables.
Peter Ray has been waiting for us at the entrance to the ballroom. He takes off through the gardens in search of a place to stash his grog. As I watch him wander around the shrubs and fish ponds, I imagine what the area would have looked like if the original idea for an amusement park had gone ahead.1
Cops and bouncers in dicky-shirts watch us suspiciously as we join the line of people entering under the shell-like archway.2 Inside, Billo Smith is leading the band through a mixture of Rock’n’Roll and swing tunes.3 There’s no Pride of Erin tonight; just Glen Miller, Arty Shaw and Bill Hayley songs all night.
Girls in hoop skirts jive with Ivy Leaguers and Nashos. They all slide around on the sprung dance-floor which has been covered with pops to make it slipperier. Tonight, as usual, an army of greasy haired bodgies patrols the room looking for trouble.
The opening bars of Golden Wedding bring everyone to a standstill. They applaud the trumpet solo and go wild for Harry Lebler on drums who, until now, has shown great restraint. Then dancing resumes for the quickstep and the fox trot. I am reminded of a night when the floor actually collapsed during a Gypsie Tap.4
Women sit on green upholstered chairs waiting to be asked to dance.5 Although I’m feeling confident in my Nasho uniform I decide to first hunt down Billy for a swig of dutch courage. I find him in one of the alcoves sitting at a table with two jugs of orange juice. Every now and then he bobs under the table with one of the jugs and emerges smiling.6
Despite the usual police presence, the bodgies are making trouble. Three of them are pushing a Nasho around in the centre of the dance floor. I’ve only been in the National Service for two months,but I feel a stirring of loyalty. So I’m in. Soon every Nasho and Bodgie has joined the fight. This time the Bodgies are outnumbered by belt-weilding Nashos.
In the watch-house I see Peter Ray sitting alone in the corner of the cell. Apparently, the cops got a bit suspicious of his leaving the ballroom every twenty minutes. He’s been charged under the Liquor Act which states it’s illegal to drink and dance at the same time.7 We’ll be let out in an hour, but for us the night is over.
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1981
It’s a cool night in May and my friend Scott and I are about to witness a side of Brisbane we never knew existed. London Ska band, Madness, are playing at Cloudland and Scott’s older brothers have allowed us to tag along. I sense that they’re not too thrilled by having to babysit two fourteen year olds at a concert, but they should have thought about that before they introduced us to those wonderful sounds that exist beyond the top forty. If we were never allowed into that downstairs room with its piles of LPs, 45s and NMEs, then we, like most other fourteen year olds in Brisbane, would never have heard of Madness.
The car has been parked half-way up a hill and we follow a darkened road as it winds its way to the top. Soon we arrive at the large arched entrance of the ballroom. Like most Brisbanites, we are used to Cloudland’s exotic shape against an otherwise drab skyline, but this is the first time we’ve seen it up close. Slender columns reaching up into a blue-lit archway create an illusion of elegance that suggests tuxedos and ballgowns rather than braces and boots.
We line up with with our fellow concert goers and I am amazed by the number of skinheads and punks making their way inside. You rarely see these types around Brisbane. I wonder whether they only come out at night. They look dangerous as they raise their arms to be frisked by the bouncers. Scott and I momentarily enter their ranks as we too are frisked.
Once inside, Scott’s brothers go their separate ways as the first band of the night ,a three piece, plays on the small cavelike stage. When I get older this band will provide a soundtrack to my life and my own band will open for them at Caesar’s Palace Ipswich. Right now, however, I don’t even know who the Go-Betweens are.
Their set soon finishes and an announcement comes over the PA that The Swingers have had to cancel due to the drummer breaking his arm. We wander around the dancefloor, waiting for the main support band, The Sports, to hit the stage. By the time they come on, the ballroom is full. I can see nothing except Stephen Cummings’s head,and that’s only when he leaps into the air. They play all the hits including Don’t Throw Stones, Who Listens to the Radio and Strangers on a Train. Then they’re gone.
People manoeuvre for position and the crowd starts surging towards the stage. The sound of a fog horn bellows throughout the darkened hall and Madness bounce on to the stage holding pineapples above their heads. The upbeat ska rhythms get the crowd skanking and the floor starts bouncing like a trampoline. The speaker stacks on either side of the stage are shaking.
A sickly sweet smell fills the air. It is the first time I smell marijuana. I start to wonder whether I’m stoned. Scott seems to be acting strangely. Is he swaying too much? Then he falls back onto two skinhead girls who almost stomp on his face.
Madness finish the set with Return of the Los Palmas 7 then leave the stage. The crowd disappears just as quickly but Scott and I have to wait around for his brothers. The lights come on and I wonder how all the bottles of alcohol which now lie empty and scattered across the floor were smuggled in past the bouncers.
I’ll return to Cloudland in a couple of months for Triple Zed’s battle of the Bands,but Madness never will. On the Brisbane leg of their Australian tour next year they will play Festival Hall. Suggs, the lead singer, will finish the show by asking the audience, “whatever happened to Cloudland”?
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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1982
It is 10:30 in the morning and the roads around Cintra Hill are jammed with cars.9 I am one of the hundreds of people who have come to salvage one last memory of Cloudland from the rubble. Looking through the mesh fence that surrounds the site, it becomes clear that nothing was to be saved. It seems like an act of violence rather than a demolition has taken place. Decorations and tinsel glitter from the piles of timber, fibro and iron. The green upholstered chairs are now smashed and buried among the rubble. And there, looking out from it all is the plaster lady holding the red fairy light.10 It is a cheap and tacky adornment but its value, like the value of Cloudland itself,cannot be measured in monetary terms.
So significant was the role Cloudland played in the social lives of three generations of Brisbane residents, that the building was listed by the National Trust. In Queensland, such a listing does little to assure a building’s preservation. Cloudland will be but one of over sixty culturally important buildings in central Brisbane that will be demolished by 1990.11 Like my fellow mourners here on Cintra Hill, I wonder how it was allowed to happen.
They came at 4am with heavy earthmoving machinery but without a demolition permit.12 This, however, did not deter the Deen Brothers who specialise in these types of clandestine demolitions. In 1979, they earned their notoriety when they tore down the Belle Vue Hotel in George Street at midnight. For the Cloudland job they employed six police to guard against protestors.13 This was an unnecessary measure as it took a mere sixty minutes to reduce the great arch and ballroom to rubble.14
In the next few days outraged residents will start demanding answers. Members of the National Heritage Commission, on their tour of Brisbane will stand at this fence but not enter the site. One commissioner will remark, “that’s Queensland for you”.15 Peter Kurts, the owner of Cloudland, will argue that an improvement of its safety standards would have been too costly.16 The Brisbane City Council will issue the Deen Brothers with a meagre $125 fine for illegal demolition.17 And Joh Bjelke-Petersen and his national party, the only ones who could have saved Cloudland, will continue to drag their feet when it comes to heritage legislation.
Later, driving down Breakfast Creek Road, I glance up towards Cintra Hill and hope that, as promised in their Yellow Pages ad, the Deen Brothers have at least left behind the memories.
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REFERENCES
While the second part of this article (1981) is my own personal account of the Madness concert at Cloudland, parts one and three are based on the many letters by architects, previous owners and residents which flooded the Courier-Mail during the fortnight following the demolition of Cloudland. The reporting of the event by Courier-Mail journalists was also a valuable source as each writer failed to maintain an objective view. Besides these written sources which have been referenced below, informal interviews with friends, family and colleagues were also used to gain a greater understanding of the significance of Cloudland to Brisbane residents. Apart from my father’s own accounts of nights at Cloudland which provide the basis for the first part of the article much of this oral history was not used directly.
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- H. Taylor & F. McBride, Brisbane: 100 Stories, Brisbane, BCC, 1997,47.
- K. Blanch, 1982, ‘The orange juice had a glow’, Courier-Mail, 8 November, p.1.
- M. Winters, 1982, ‘Cloudland’s 11 “beautiful” years, Courier-Mail, 11 November, p.4.
- ‘Ballroom became a landmark’, Courier-Mail (November 8 1982), p.3.
- A. Mackenzie, 1982, ‘Undeserved fate for a lady’, Courier-Mail, 8 November, p.3.
- Blanch, op. cit.
- ibid.
- R. Riddel, 1982, ‘Giant arch seen as symbolic point, Courier-Mail, 10 November, p.4.
- S. van Kempen, 1982, ‘Why rush to demolish?’ Courier-Mail, 10 November. p.4
- Mackenzie, op. cit.
- R. Fisher, ‘Nocturnal Demolitions: The Long March Towards Heritage Legislation in Queensland’, Packaging the Past?, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1991, p.55.
- A. Mackenzie, 1982, ‘Cloudland demolition at 4 a.m.’, Courier-Mail, 8 November, p.1.
- Police guarded ballroom’s end’, Courier-Mail (November 9 1982), p.2.
- A. Mackenzie, 1982, ‘Cloudland demolition at 4 a.m.’ Courier-Mail, 8 November, p.1.
- B. Ord, 1982, ‘A tour of joy and sadness’, Courier-Mail, 10 November, p.5.
- K. Condon, 1982, ‘Experts claim Cloudland was ready to fall’, Courier-Mail, 9 November, p.1.
- Fisher, op.cit., 58.
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A Place Called Cloudland
(song Lyrics) by Tim Kelly 2002
Well I was just fourteen
Innocent and a little green
But from innocence we all must fall
Me, I landed on a sprung dance floor
The whole room was swaying
And the Sports were playing
“Strangers on a Train”
I learnt to stand
In a place called Cloudland
They’d catch a tram from Adelaide Street
And with their brothel creepers on the seat
They’d head for the blue-lit arch
And try to sneak their gin passed
And they were always letting
“Golden Wedding”
carry them away
Billo Smith led the band
Every night at Cloudland
We Rise, We fall
We used to have a ball
She was too pretty
For such an ugly city
Unsound, unseen
Thanks to the brothers Deen
I lost my thrill
Up on Cintra Hill
Well they came at four a.m.
So nobody could bother them
No not even City Hall
Could stop that wrecking Ball
And all they left behind
Was an empty skyline
Oh and the memories
Town houses now stand
In this place called Cloudland.
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