Goodna 4300, Brisbane AUS

The sun beams down on this poor lower income suburb just like any other, the grass is still wet from the morning’s rain.

Children are waking up and getting ready for another day of 'Social Conditioning - How to be a good slave 101' also known as school.

I see mothers and fathers walking their kids to the station, talking and imparting knowledge as they prepare to offer their children to a complete stranger for yet another day.

The council workers empty the bins at the park, a scent of stale beer and vomit circulates as the only reminder of the night before.

I watch as business men share their train carriage with the near homeless, outside the window another run down and abandoned house, still covered in mud from the previous year’s disaster.

The unemployment and crime rate is not as bad as people would have you believe, yet still there is a sense of hopelessness and despair.

The old woman sitting opposite me squints as she reads from an old leather bible, her clothes and feet dirty from this life’s trials, the poor grasp on to a god they have never seen for reasons they don't understand.

God left this place a long time ago.

All that remains is the human struggle, it’s almost cliché sounding, survival of the fittest has become denial of the richest.

Reviews

[cartera]

I lived in a suburb of Brisbane for a while. It was interesting. So intersting that I cannot remember its name: but I do remember the Irish club.
..............
This piece strikes me as a beginning to a longer piece, which I feel would be bloody good, mate. Please carry on with it.
ATB
Alex.

[Michael of Gilead]

hmmm

[Rene Velez]

Damn sounds like Harlem...this is good, was sent by Emma.

[roarke]

The picture of life from the inside of a commuter train car, sounds like the beginning of a novel here.

It's all a survival, that's for sure.

[Aidz]

Emma shot me this, and I wonder if I know this suburb if it is in Brissy, I too live in a low social economic area and soon to be worse so fully understand the sentiment behind this write

[emmajoy]

Wow, if that's an appropriate word to use. Your story is more than powerful, more than a sequence of pictures, tis a masterpiece, a cynical piece of writing riddled start to finish by truth.

That final sentence makes more than .. everything.

[Melanie Jane Boicourt S..]

I like your writing. You really paint a picture.

[Overthehill]

This is sad and emotive but beautifully written.