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1 week ago | 
westender.com.au | Kerry McGovern
Images of tree cover, vines in the trees, undergrowth, and ground cover form part of our understanding of West End’s pre-European settlement. The First Nation’s peoples planted and attended to those trees and plants and all the other life on the Kurilpa peninsula. There were, and still are, birds, insects, lizards, native rats, and snails native to this small area. Hundreds of people among the 15,000 people living on the West End peninsula know how to conserve bits of its exquisite biodiversity.
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2 weeks ago | 
westender.com.au | Kerry McGovern
The Brisbane Festival in September will offer over 2000 performances, 1000 individual shows, and cover the entire city. 40% of events will be free. The Festival will take over the walking bridges: Goodwill, Neville Bonner, and Kangaroo Point Bridges. Nunukul and Munaldjali man Stephen Page and Daly River man Jacob Nash are collaborating to bring Baleen Moondjan to the Brisbane River, aka Maiwar. It premiered at the Adelaide Fringe.
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3 weeks ago | 
westender.com.au | Kerry McGovern
Dusty Springfield’s life was reimagined last night at the QPAC Concert Hall. Growing up in post-war Britain as a red-haired Irish Catholic tomboy called Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien, she overcame parental disapproval and Catholic guilt to receive an OBE for her services to popular music. She adopted Dusty, a disparaging moniker given to her by the nuns at school, and created “Springfield” from scratch. The young Mary forged a career for Dusty in the 1960s.
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1 month ago | 
westender.com.au | Kerry McGovern
An uproariously delighted audience filled the concert hall Friday night, as the QSO shared music from famous films, scored by Hans Zimmer. We revisited Sherlock Holmes, The Dark Knight, Batman, The Thin Red Line, The Lion King, Kung Fu Panda, Inception, Pirates of the Caribbean, and others. It was a full program. It’s surprising how much the music lingers in our memory of a film. The QSO brings movies to life with its annual blockbuster film concert series.
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1 month ago | 
westender.com.au | Kerry McGovern
Music is the balm of the soul. And Strauss, who mixes the rhythms of the gypsies of Hungary with the classical, romantic style of middle Europe, is a master chemist. While we probably don’t know the names of all the popular pieces Strauss composed, our souls respond to them instantly. The QSO very wisely put a link to all of them on Spotify on its website.
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2 months ago | 
westender.com.au | Kerry McGovern
“The Lord Stanley” is due to open again on 9th May. About twenty-two pubs (as opposed to places of accommodation) serve 82,000 people along the corridor from West End to Coorparoo. The “Lord Stanley” on the corner of Didsbury and Stanley Street East in East Brisbane is one of them. It is undergoing a $15 million refurbishment. “It’ll probably take twenty years to recoup our investment, but I’m proud of this hotel”, said Albert Hakfoort as he showed me around the building site this morning.
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2 months ago | 
westender.com.au | Kerry McGovern
Saturday April 5. The QSO is playing the soundtrack to films at the Brisbane Convention Centre. Almost 2000 people attended last night’s performance of the Bond movie “Skyfall”. Tonight, the QSO switches to play live the soundtrack to “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. Initially, I thought we’d be listening to the soundtrack. I’d not seen the Bond film, so I was unsure if Adele’s theme music and Newman’s soundtrack alone would resonate with me. How wrong I was.
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Mar 28, 2025 | 
westender.com.au | Kerry McGovern
“Calamity Jane” provides rip-roaring, laugh-out-loud, stamp-the-floor fun with a smidgen of social commentary, in-house jokes, and songs aplenty—just what we need in these “interesting times.”It’s old-fashioned fun that reminded me of regional Queensland local Arts productions, where everyone (cast and audience) knows everyone and can add a few in-house jokes to spice up the plot. You have to be quick to catch her allusions.
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Mar 16, 2025 | 
westender.com.au | Kerry McGovern
You will never again see the Scottish play interpreted this way. Intended to open on International Women’s Day, it found its audience. Seventy percent of the delayed opening night audience was women. Before us, the witches told the story from the beginning to the emphatic end. Enough to the patriarchy. Enough to women seeing clearly where ambitions will end and stepping back and saying nothing. Enough to participating in the blood letting that men like to inflict.
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Feb 20, 2025 | 
westender.com.au | Kerry McGovern
The Queensland Symphony Orchestra is turning into a world class orchestra, under the baton of Umberto Clerici. Last week they played Abassi, Brophy and Mozart. This week it is Debussy, Respighi and Stravinsky. The audience raised the roof with appreciation for Circa’s extraordinary dance / circus in front of the full orchestra playing “The Rite of Spring”. There’s an engagement happening between the QSO and Brisbane audiences.
