FROM MY CORNER .... with Ann Brunswick
Just recently, I had need to service a faraway client which necessitated my travelling by aeroplane. Everything went fine until my return to Brisbane Airport and the JetStar terminal.
Because of my client’s special needs, I had a rather heavy suitcase full of rather expensive and quite technical equipment which I dutifully collected from the carousal.
So far so good. But I guess many of my loyal readers will know that the bane of a traveller’s existence can sometimes be in trying to follow airport signs – both within terminals themselves and on the highways and byways that surround them. Anyone who has ever tried to return a rental card can attest to that.
So your Ann grabbed her suitcase and studiously studied the internal signs as to where taxis might be available. And yes, high above me, a sign for taxis pointed to the ceiling. In other words, do not veer left or right. Walk out of the terminal doors and the taxi rank would be ahead of me somewhere. Right? I mean Front.
Well, as you probably know, the Brisbane Airport is an ongong construction zone as the Brisbane Airport Corporation thinks up new ways to make money – I’m sorry, I meant to say – to improve customer services to the flying public.
So just outside the terminal was temporary fencing that stretched to the horizon left and right, with just the entrance to the escalators that go up to the trains. There were a number of signs on that fencing but guess which one was missing: the one that would have given a fairly tired and cranky columnist – my client, after all, been up virtually all night – just a glimmer of hope as to where to trudge next with my luggage.
Now I’ve been prowling this planet long enought to know that you shoud never, ever, second guess a sign. They are put there after all, to direct you to your eventual destination. So it would be absolute folly to second guess that internal sign and turn left or right, right?. But going ahead, up the escalators and down the other side, seemed pretty damned illogical. But then again, modern airports do tend to put things a long, long way from where you’d like them to be. The further away a parking station is, for example, often the more chance there is that you might end up paying a $15 fee and handing over the keys to your car.
So what to do? Way to the left there was not a single sign of a taxi rank. Ditto to the right. So I did the only sensible thing by hightailing my expensive high heels back into the terminal in search of someone who might be able to help. That took forever, before I finally began the journey to the left to a rank that I guess would have been for Virgin Blue.
Construction zone or otherwise, Brisbane Airport Corporation appears to make quite a handome profit running the airport, so surely they can have staff doing daily checks on the signs passengers need to move easily to and from it.
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And on the subjectof travel, a little gripe about Bowen Hills railway station. Is that the grungiest, tackiest station on the CityRail network?
Considering the suburb is one of those urban renewal hotspot poddy thingos where work on a fancy new apartment tower seems to begin every other day with New York-inspired names like Harlem Ghetto and MeatPacking District, surely the residents of this much-sought-after area deserve a modern, well-lit station with state-of-the-art train time display boards and a 21st Century PA system to match?
All I ask, if indeed the powers that be do decide to do something about this state-of-the-century-before-last railway station, is please don’t come up with any design that looks remotely like the abomination that passes for Indooroopilly railway station.!
