Boora Boora - Kincumber #3 - Brisbane Water Walk #7

Every time I go past on the bus I look for 'Boora Boora'. It's a "house and cottage, James Dunlop ... Avoca Drive (near Dunlop Hill) ... 1840s, 1907". They could still be there, hiding among the trees on the side of the hill, weeds grown high and some Dear Old Thing quietly mouldering away inside. Or perhaps they're both gone and the street named after them is all that remains. The street runs from Avoca Drive down a gentle slope to Kincumber Broadwater and if you stood on the loo of a house at the top you could see across the Broadwater to Yattalunga and Davistown.


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Kincumber Broadwater's a quiet bay. Not many private jetties compared to the rest of Brisbane Water. The ferry doesn't go there and it's pretty sheltered. The cicadas are a wall of sound on Dunlop Hill and the air is perfumed with climbing jasmine and roses.

At the bottom of the hill there are foot lanes between the houses leading to a narrow park along the waterfront. Quiet and hot on a cloudless day in late spring and scarcely a ripple on the water.

Most of the houses near the water there are from the seventies to noughties. The older houses are up the hill and strung along Avoca Drive. Today, with the Christmas king tides, the water will be lapping high on the low bank there.

A guy came out of a cul-de-sac and walked ahead of me. Ordinary guy, shorts, shirt, about thirty, average looking. But weird, definitely weird. It was his hair. A guy like that, straight looking, thirty-ish, dressed like that usually has shortish hair and no beard or mo. This guy had a beard down to his chest, a real bikie beard. The beard was unusual but not unheard of. But his hair was long and matted. Not dreadlocks, dreads are neat and regular. This was like he hadn't combed it for a few years. It just didn't fit with the rest of him. He didn't walk like a nutter, no twitching or starting at sudden noises or muttering to himself. When he passed he didn't whiff at all. Just this thing with the hair. His beard was clean and combed and his hair didn't look dirty. Maybe he was some sort of extreme bear (proudly hairy gay guy).


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I wandered along Avoca Drive again and came to the 1945 Post Office. The current Post Office is a generic place down the road at the shopping centre, opposite the cop shop, and the one before this was at Manasseh Frost's place.


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You can see the old Post Office sign about the current occupant's sign.


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The old PO Boxes are still there, albeit closed up. I wonder if the upholsterer uses the backs of them as a cupboard.