Welcome to the red zone!

It wouldn't surprise me if I began to dream of the sound of endless choppers over my head after this past fortnight!

I live pretty close to the so called 'red zone'  for G20, so things have been a little bit surreal in my neighbourhood of late, with hundreds of police on the street, extra patrols down suburban streets, and even police boats on the river, from little zippy ones to the giant ominous looking ones. I'm pretty happy I live in a part of town which is frequently open on public holidays etc, and I have most things I need right here - lucky too, as public transport will be a bit of a trick this weekend.

I was walking home from the city on Thursday night (missed the last bus before 7pm public transport mayhem commenced!) and was witness to a large motorcade coming through off the expressway and across George Street. Which was on one hand quite impressive, but on the other, sort of just annoying as it held up the traffic and crossing lights for a while.

Although academically it makes sense to have additional security for this many heads of state all being in town at once, I do get the feeling that Brisbane thinks it's all a little bit funny, really!

I mean, all the buildings around Riverside started to go into lock-down from midway through the week - but quite bizarrely you might have 3 in one block with MEGA security, and then one (e.g. my building) which had no lock-down or security at all!

Having to go out on meetings through the course of my day, I encountered my first secured building and was told that if I did have a meeting with this person I would have to call them and they would have to come down and meet me. Now, given the extra security wasn't expected that early, I hadn't thought to bring the phone number with me. Which I explained to the security guard as we were chatting. I showed him emails on my phone demonstrating the meeting confirmation, and asked him if I would be able to be swiped up to the relevant floor.

To which he very politely obliged!

Hmm. I'm pretty sure that I shouldn't have been able to talk my way up there!

I had a few similar experiences throughout the week, and came to the conclusion that us Brisbanites must on some level just not believe that anyone would really be bothered to blow up our buildings!!

That said, I am glad that the police haven't taken that approach, no matter how unnerving it is to look up from one's phone and see 35 police walking along the street toward you, or making tourists show them all the pictures of produce they've just taken at the fruit & veg market.

I'd say I'm off to the local pool for a swim on this muggy afternoon, but wouldn't you know it, the G20 summit has red-zoned the pool. :)  Be careful of those girls in bikinis, leaders, you never know what they might be concealing!