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June 1, 2026 — 5:00am
My father, John Arthur McKelvey Shera, was a revered doctor in the city of Ipswich and a survivor of the Kokoda Trail. He also served in Tarakan, Balikpapan and Morotai.
In the 1980s, John became the accidental subject of an Archibald Prize winning portrait. His daughter-in law, Davida Allen, came upon him shirtless and watering his garden, and she abandoned her plans to submit a painting of Sam Neill for a far more attractive subject (no offence Sam).
I lived with John in Ipswich in his declining years in his big old Queenslander within a jungle of trees. After he died, in 1998, it was time to settle down and raise my own family, and we chose leafy Jindalee. Dad remains with us on the wall here as a nod to the ancestor worship that many in Vietnamese culture practise.
I had youthful memories of Jindalee. I recalled the 1967-68 Scout Jamboree, when two of my brothers made a pretty good fist of putting up a tent Versailles – only to burn one of the tents down while basting a leg of mutton above an open fire.
Across the bridge and around the corner from Jindalee was the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and Fauna Reserve, another highlight from my childhood. I remember taking the boat upriver from Brisbane to this fabled place in the 1950s. I recall being thrilled there were public baths, a golf course, an athletics track, a butcher, a pharmacy, a Chinese restaurant and a fish and chip shop.
Jindalee’s location was another factor in us moving here. Vietnamese markets in Darra were five minutes away, and the highway was a stone’s throw from our house. I could blast off anywhere to the east, west, south or north to see my many friends and family. Be on the Gold Coast in less than an hour. Be at Lang Park in 15 minutes!
Jindalee afforded the convenience of schools my children could walk to. It also afforded easy access to the University of Queensland in whose libraries I had worked, like Hercules in the Augean Stables, for a number of years. I met the girl of my dreams there: a scholar from Nha Trang, Vietnam’s Gold Coast. Number one son studied at UQ, and it is now an easy commute for him to train and coach elite athletes on dedicated athletic tracks and local parks.
The sweet and raucous sound of a hundred birds in the suburb’s numerous trees became backing tracks to number two son’s musical endeavours. Erik Satie, Sam Cooke, Bowie, Queen, Down by the Salley Gardens; all aided and abetted by the local Centenary High, which has a wonderful music program.
Jindalee was the first “Centenary” suburb – conceived in 1959, Queensland’s 100th year. That’s why the school, the bridge and the motorway are tagged “Centenary”. There’s also the Centenary Little Athletics Club. Friday nights under the big skies and cool summer nights on the grass with a community and committee doing it for the love of their children. And all in an alcohol-free environment.
In 2025 my friends from the film biz down south, including the Oscar-nominated director Chris Noonan, made the pilgrimage to Jindalee to make a little “Happy Birthday SBS” ad with us at the Athletics Club. And I can tell you, it takes a bit to get Sydneysiders to cross the border into deepest, darkest Queensland.
And of course there is the magnificent Brisbane City Council public library in “Jindalee South” (also known as Mount Ommaney), opened in the late 1990s by lord mayor Jim Soorley. The library was designed by a Frenchman, offers a community meeting room and collections in English, Vietnamese and Chinese, and seamless integration with Brisbane City Council’s other 32 public libraries.
The library is where my wife formed bonds of friendship with other mums at the Babies, Books and Rhymes sessions – mates that have stayed with her for 30 years. The English conversation groups there fed a then-young mother’s desire for multilingual, intellectual company in a new land. And it’s there I can catch up on some of the latest histories as Australia emerges from its historical amnesia and its cringing monoculturalism.
The great, spectacular river is less than a hundred metres from our leafy villa. Here one can see pheasant coucals, echidnas, bush turkeys, and a range of birds that would impress St Francis of Assisi. Not to mention carpet snakes, skinks and water dragons.
The great, spectacular river is less than a hundred metres from our leafy villa. Here one can see a range of birds that would impress St Francis of Assisi.
Mangroves have returned as a gift after the floods, and here we have (in the Jindalee flood catchment) some very keen environmental groups attempting to keep the lungs of the city clean with all things green. And here we also have the prettiest single-span aluminium bridge in the whole of Brisbane, which is very romantic.
Downsides? Not many. Flood does have a tendency to swallow us up, plunging us into the dark, silent night, the brown river leaving us covered in slippery silt, as if we are within the putrid belly of a giant carpet snake.
I have a vision that maybe a few flood-prone properties could be bought up by the council and made into micro-botanical gardens and fauna preserves with massive trees beside the laneways to further flatter the natural environment in our little suburb. Four-storey trees to mock the two-storey houses. Pocket parks adorned with mini-arks, “Jindalee decks,” which float up and down as floodwaters rise.
And there has been a redrawing of the air traffic routes. The sound of birds and their pleasant laughing songs, my literary train of thought, and my dear number two son’s piano and tin whistle compositions are regularly interrupted by the groaning of jet engines.
Is it too much to ask Big Air and Good Gov to give us a break and make the new routes a little more sonically friendly to the good people of Jindalee?
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