REMEMBER WHEN

IF Surfers Paradise is a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, then Brisbane had a bipolar disorder.

A Bulletin crew spent a night in Brisbane’s notorious Fortitude Valley from 6pm until 2am – similar to the one in Surfers Paradise the weekend before – and discovered a city at odds with itself.

While Surfers offered a split personality – family friendly during the day and party animal at night – Brisbane bordered on psychotic.

After 10pm the arrests in the

Valley began for drunk and disorderly behaviour, a person suffered what appeared to be a drug overdose as he convulsed in the middle of Brunswick Street and an 18-year-old tried to grope a Bulletin reporter before offering money for sexual favours.

The Bulletin team was prompted to visit Brisbane after experiencing a night in Surfers Paradise in the wake of a barrage of bad publicity; during the previous month Surfers endured a number of attacks, being labelled ‘a dump’ and ‘dowdy’.

The glitter strip attracted an average of 20,000 people on a Friday night and the Bulletin’s visit the previous week elicited hardly a bad word from tourists and locals about Surfers.

Our cousins up north had an average of between 10,000 and 15,000 visitors in the Valley on Friday nights, according to the city’s chamber of commerce and there were 145 licensed venues.

Between 8pm and 10pm a massive mood swing seemed to take place – from electric with expectation to shrouded with disappointment as girls threw up in the street and seemingly drug-affected people ranted.