Winter Solstice Festival at Northey Street City Farm had all the makings of a good night. Among the abundant citrus groves and dormant beds of winter greens, danced hippies supping lentil soup from recycled bamboo cups. Strains of pop protest songs filtered through the crowds of revellers, the profundity of the lyrics finding resonance with the good, the earnest and the disbelieving. The perfectly dishevelled good looks of the lead singers helped the cause.

The whole event was agreeably low-key and small-scale. Arriving at the festival, one was free to wander throughout the city farm – which sprawls over a few blocks by Breakfast Creek at Windsor – and explore the grounds. Perhaps one would discover the candle-making demonstration by some guy in a hemp poncho by the potatoes, or a girl knitting goat’s wool with her toes. Is there no limit to the creativity of people who don’t watch television ?!

Charming idiosyncrasies aside, it strikes me that no matter where in the world, who the people or what the occasion, these festivals are all underpinned by the same trinity of entertainment. Food, music, port-a-loos. You can’t compromise on any of the elements or the result will never be a truly great fiesta. As in previous years, I had expected to spend a relaxing evening watching some mediocre musicians biding time till the bonfire was lit. The pleasant surprise was that this time, there were some really decent live performances even despite it still being a free, not-for-profit event.

As always, the Chai Café did a roaring trade, eventually running out of their top seller – hot chai – far earlier than expected. I wonder if the hippie community is upset by having their most iconic beverage appropriated by yuppie culture ? I suppose the hippies stole the idea from the Indians first . . . along with yoga.

Interestingly and possibly without parallel in today’s era of saturation marketing, there was no alcohol license and no branding of the festival. (Though as an addendum, Northey Street was far from being free of mind-altering substances.) In a perverse kind of a way, it felt strange not to be served coffee in a ‘Lipton’s Tea’ takeaway cup while taking shelter under a ‘GM Holden’ marquee. That the festival was staged so successfully without a corporate financial crutch is a testament to the always underappreciated human capital of volunteering.

This story begins somewhere in the overripe petri dish of debauchery and human waste that is Fortitude Valley on a Saturday night. The crisp notes in the air are unseasonably chilly for BrizVegas in June, but undeterred, the city’s young women spurn winter’s wrath and continue to wear tight acrylic garments barely covering their asses and emphasising their boobs. Down south in Melbourne, the cold would drive partygoers to cocoon themselves in sensible winter coats, but not here, not in BrizVegas.

We throw back some more Vodka Cruiser and say ‘Up yours and up north’ !

Yelling almost coherent profanities into her iPhone, a beautiful girl with skin like buffalo hide sits on the stoop of a club. Her white blonde hair, styled with such care just a few hours before, now flies about her face and is getting stuck to the sticky alcohol coating her arms. A couple of meters away on Ann Street, her male acquaintance plays chicken with the cars. Arms akimbo, he is trying to have a conversation with people on the other side of the road, slapping taxi bonnets in an attempt to make himself heard, but only succeeds in scaring the Sikhs sitting inside.

For a moment, he remembers his duty to his now sobbing girlfriend, who is in danger of toppling into the gutter, and races back to her side. She fills him in on the details of her phone call, and they express their outrage at whatever ghastly injustice has befallen them, by turning on each other in play fighting. Exhausted and disoriented after a few seconds, the girl teeters on the edge of the footpath, and with the accuracy and rage of a recently-sacked AFL football player, hurls her iPhone onto the bitumen.

The moment of beautiful explosion where thousands of shiny nano-electronic pieces find their resting place on the road, is spectacular. Strangely, the girl does not seem upset at the destruction of her iPhone. Unfazed, she continues on her personal tirade. Arm in drunken arm, the couple unsteadily make their way to another bar before lockout ruins their night.

Tomorrow is another day, and for now at least, there are enough rare earth minerals in China for everyone to buy the newest iProduct on the market.

Picture yourselves attending one of those glitzy functions, somewhere by the river, rubbing shoulders with the city’s glitterati – minor newsreaders and disgraced sporting heroes – swilling some Aussie sparkling, waiting your turn to be networked into an exhausting conversation by an ambitious young PR executive. You’re offered some sesame-crusted seared tuna or arancini while you eyeball the room in search of another networking opportunity, only to see every other fake-lashed eye unashamedly doing the same thing.

The noise of the rabble dies down when one of the hired celebs takes the mic to declare the awesomeness of this night. He tells us he is soooo honoured to be a part of this local event, how far our city has come, and ends the speech by proclaiming parties like these really prove that . . . “Brisbane has arrived!”

It’s not the first time I’ve heard or read this phrase. It’s been doing the rounds for a while and probably has a bit more mileage left in it, and yet I don’t think I’ve considered what the hell it means.

Ok, so we’re all guilty of being swept up the in the alluring jingoism plumping up this prosaic ode to our city, “Brisbane has arrived !”. Marketing buzzphrases like these are so common in contemporary lexicon, that nonsensical or poorly contextualised words don’t register as unusual anymore.

But if we consider it now, when would you say that BrizVegas initially fell into the cultural void ? And more intriguingly, does anyone know when it made its comeback onto the world stage ?

It is implicit in their public dialogue that our government and media bodies believe we now live in a bleeding-edge new world city with global nous. Even the billboard at the international airport tells us so.

According to our collective consciousness, it hasn’t always been the case. We know that BrizVegas was once a forgotten country town of nobodies doing nothing of note. David Malouf’s Johnno and historic rivalries with southern cousins have scarred us with that cultural cringe. In our desperation to be noticed, spooked by a past spent in ostracised oblivion, perhaps we don’t appreciate that we have steadily been developing a rather charming character. We felt plagued for so long with the disgrace of inferiority, and our remedy has been to recast our city in a starring role, though our experience is perhaps more suited to understudy.

Many identity-conscious modern cities suffer the same affliction we do, of cannily bolstering big-budget development projects to feed a hungry economy without considering the human-scale impact. There is a great deal about BrizVegas that calls for celebration. I just don’t believe we have yet reached a point of perfection in order to seriously proclaim ourselves “arrived !”

Who’s going to BrisVegas’ Winter Festival in King George Square starting next week ? Just like Vienna, Paris and Prague before it, BrizVegas will host an outdoor skating rink and ersatz alpine lodge (though perhaps they were the genuine article in Europe).

I can forgive the misplaced cultural overtones, but the fake snow machines and skating rink are just outrageous ! Good thing Tim Flannery is not dead, because he would be turning in his grave over this flagrant disregard of our most pressing public concern . . . climate change.

Of course, being that the Winter Festival is a privately-funded event – staged for profit – we would not expect its organisers to be campaigners of a green lifestyle. But considering the location on the doorstep of our primary council building, it is incredibly hypocritical of BrizVegas City Council. This is the same BCC who advertise ‘Climate Smart Home Service Rebates’, are champions of ‘Earth Hour’, host events like ‘Sustainability Day’ (whatever that means). Council shamelessly flaunts a green-washed, eco-friendly I HEART BNE logo but does not have a moral leg to stand on. The result of such contradiction in our publicly-elected office, is a confused public who do not know where they are supposed to stand in regards to environmental issues.

Is this an ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ scenario where we are all too afraid to admit squeamishness in the face of gross and wasteful energy consumption ? Is the big cheese who agreed to the concept of keeping a giant plate of ice frozen for three weeks under the BrizVegas sun, aware of the world’s dwindling resources ?

Oh wait, maybe it’s a ‘Let them Eat Cake’ scenario whereby those in power know the world will be a wasteland by the end of the decade. They suppose that perishing together with fond memories of figure ice-skating and churros in King George Square, is better than languishing another few years, pointlessly changing our halogen bulbs to energy-efficient ones and not printing out emails in a desperate bid to save our planet.

Now where did I put my ice skates . . .