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While
driving along Breakfast Creek Road in Brisbane you can
see a large billboard advertising the Cloudland apartments
for sale. What a wonderful place to live, up there, past
the Mediterranean Church of Victories, on the site of
the old Cloudland Ballroom. On Boyd Street, on the old
ballroom site, nearing the angels, the view stretches
through the clouds to the city and the Brisbane River.
The Cloudland Ballroom has been described as a 'material
history of Brisbane heterosexual romantic fantasy' (by
Reekie), favourably compared to the Taj Mahal and often
cited as an example of high kitsch. And even though this
piece of Brisbane architectural and social history now
has apartments built on it, so many people speak of their
memories of the Cloudland Ballroom it is as if everyone
in Brisbane over the age of fifty has a little piece of
Cloudland in them.
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The
Cloudland Ballroom was built in 1939-40. It was said to
be the finest ballroom of its kind in Australia and have
the best sprung dance floor in the southern hemisphere.
It had an entrance shaped like a hollow Easter egg and,
inside, eighteen metre high arches sheltered hidden alcoves
with upholstered seating. The Ballroom could comfortably
hold two thousand people and had an inside balcony stretching
around the sides of the dance floor. At its center was
an enormous pink dome. The Cloudland site also originally
included an amusement park known as 'Luna Park' and the
architect of the project, Adolphus Parry-Fielder, wanted
to image the location as an Alpine resort. To this end
he used a funicular rail he had copied from Europe, with
two cars, holding thirty passengers each, carrying patrons
up 330 feet from Breakfast Creek road to Cloudland Ballroom.
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During
the Second World War the Cloudland Ballroom was used for
dances and was a common place for visiting servicemen
to meet local girls. It was then commandeered by the military
and used by the American soldiers and Camp 'Luna Park',
as it was then known, had rows of sleeping cots set up
on the sprung dance floor.
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Even
though Cloudland's architecture was memorable, it is the
social memories that come to the fore as a meeting place
for thousands of Brisbane couples. Now seventy-five years
old, a Brisbane resident remembers back to younger days
catching trams home from Cloudland after the sun had risen,
still wearing his dinner jacket. He would have danced
to the music of Billy Romaine's orchestra. "I remember
one time we were there (Cloudland), it was before I met
my wife, there was a big blue. Yeah, just by the tram."
He drifts off into another time shaking his head. "The
police didn't know what to do so left 'em to it." He laughs
and looks young again. "I've been married fifty years,
met my wife at Cloudland."
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