There's this rule. If you want to know what's happening in a town you phone the publican or the post office. Every journalist knows it. It's the key to cutting through a lot of crap to get to a story and to filter out a lot of official interference. Well today I found another wealth of information - the bus driver. As a way of escaping the heat, I decided to walk down near the river to catch the afternoon breeze and found myself at the outdoor G20 art gallery know as The Pillars Street Art Gallery. On a couple of recent trips across the Go Between Bridge I'd seen the work underway in Merivale Street industrial site and decided to have a closer look. As I stood there, a bloke started talking to me. With the enthusiasm and knowledge of a talented tour guide, he told me about the project and each of the artists. He was particularly taken by Guido van Helten's work of the Indigenous child. He told me he's followed Guido's work since falling in love with it on a number of traffic signal boxes and added that the artist had recently returned from commissions in Iceland. But, he said, we in Brisbane were getting to see the work for nothing. He was frustrated at the lack of attention these remarkable art works were getting. Then after several minutes of non-stop talking be paused to take a breath and added "it's okay. I'm not a journalist or anything. I am just a bus driver." Now, that brought a smile to my face. Well Alan the bus driver you are not JUST anything. You are a man with a great appreciation of art and a knack of telling a story - even if you are not a journalist.
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