Frances Whiting

Everyone set your watches back 15 years.

And then there was an idea that if you wanted to make it, you had to move to Sydney or Melbourne, particularly creatively.

And I don't know what actually happened to change that as the spokesman for Queensland.

I actually think that the things that we used to find a bit daggy and a bit embarrassing about Brisbane and Queensland are actually the things that people are now loving it for and

The big saying was always that Brisbane was like a big country town.

And it kind of still is.

I was at a dinner last night at a restaurant and we were talking and the man, I don't know, someone just said, oh, is that such and such from this suburb?

And then someone else said, no, no, not those authorities or wherever it was.

It's the ones from, so it still can kind of somehow feel we've got this interconnectedness.

And creatively, I wonder if...

You know how they sometimes say like a diamond is forged under hard conditions?

Sometimes I wonder if, because we've even musically, Brisbane's, you know, really given a lot of really great musical acts, Powderfinger, Savage Garden.

They're kind of bad above their average, I think.

But what I've seen is I used to think that Brisbane to me is like the girl that no one wanted to dance with.

he's become the belle of the ball.

That's brilliant.

That's so brilliant.

I would like to be asked...

Because I think it's important.

I was thinking about this the other day because The Nocturnals is by far my most successful book.