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The Hills are alive with the sound of … screeching tyres and speeding motorbikes at 1am on a random Tuesday night. Because pea-brained idiots live around here.
Is it wrong of me that sometimes, after being woken up by the noise, I lie in the darkness waiting for the bang of a hot rod hitting a pole or tree? Not to wish them injury, of course – simply to write their vehicle off so the rest of us can go back to sleep.
It hasn’t happened yet, and I’d probably feel guilty if it did. Eventually, the hoons move on to somewhere else, because people with few brain cells get bored easily.
Please forgive the rant. I’ll start again. About 14 kilometres north-west of the CBD, Arana Hills is a leafy pocket that sits comfortably on the edge of Bunyaville Conservation Park, where suburbia gives way to tall gums, walking paths and the occasional wallaby or koala sighting.
Magpies, currawongs, rainbow lorikeets, cockatoos, and crazy corellas pick through the grass opposite The Wood Fired Oven – the best pizza joint around.
I love where I live, despite the hooning. It’s a beautiful, green, working-class neighbourhood, with a few McMansions squeezed in, as happens in older suburbs like this. Knock one down, squeeze in two.
I moved here six years ago for the trees, the birds and the fact it was more affordable than other green suburbs this side of the river.
Arana Hills was first bought in 1878 by the Patrick family, and was mostly farmland for the next 60-odd years. In 1937, the Patricks subdivided into smaller blocks, but it wasn’t until the mid-1950s that developers moved in to create residential estates.
It was marketed as Camden Park back then, but because there were too many Camden-somethings in Brisbane at the time, locals voted in 1962 to change the name to Arana Hills. “Arana” means “welcome” in the local Indigenous language, according to the City of Moreton Bay Library.
The suburb hit the boom in the 1970s when young families moved to the cluster of Hills suburbs, nicknamed Nappy Valley – Arana Hills, Ferny Hills and Everton Hills. I doubt any of the quickly and cheaply built original houses would be heritage listed, but they have decades of memories.
The library opened in 1976, and is a favourite place for my children and I. Kmart Plaza opened in 1978, and it hasn’t changed much since then, apart from a coat of paint.
Some parts of Arana Hills have a village feel and their own identity. In my cul-de-sac, the neighbours gather twice a year – winter solstice and around Christmas – for a street curry night. Those with a fire pit plonk it at the end of the road. Through the afternoon, picnic tables appear, then tablecloths and camp chairs. The curries come out about 5pm, and everyone shares a meal, a laugh, a few tall tales, and the kids play long past their normal bedtimes.
People know their neighbours. We wave our hellos, plan Christmas drinks together, and help each other get ready for big storms. It’s a community.
Cabbage Tree Creek is our local bike path, with trees so big and gnarled I couldn’t wrap my arms around them if I tried. The path beside the creek meanders for kilometres mostly in the shade of these beautiful giants, and is heaven on a hot afternoon. Dogs swim in various spots along the route.
Living in the Hills district, of course, makes a walk around the block into a cardio challenge. No matter which way you go, you’ve got to power up an incline or five.
Arana Hills is a bit of an overlooked green treasure, which is how we like it. Currently, about a fifth of the area is dedicated parkland. It’s why the birds and locals love it here.
Unfortunately, developers are trying to slap in 15-storey apartment buildings – 15 storeys! – in a small footprint, with little to no added infrastructure, road widening, public transport, services, playgrounds, or off-street parking to support the added thousands they’re hoping to house. Geniuses.
The grassroots community activists are trying to be heard. Arana Hills is a great and diverse suburb; everyone is welcome. We’re not NIMBYs, but the suburb doesn’t have the infrastructure right now to properly support current residents, let alone a significant population boom. Medical centres? Playgrounds? Enough green space and more trees for thousands? Build them first.
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