INTRO TO BRISBANE MONOPOLY
A new Brisbane version of Monopoly was announced last week to give the city its own version of the popular board game. The details are here if interested. But instead of Park Lanes, Old Kent Roads, and any Islingtons, they are calling out for Brisbane people to nominate their favourite Brisbane places or streets to make the new version one Brisbane can be proud of.
It’s all done via the new Brisbane Monopoly Facebook page for those who wish to share their selections, and we sure will too, but for now we’d like to nominate one location that not only is a place of note and history, it would be a name known only to Brisbane people (and maybe only a few of those), and is a must include.
Of course being The Gurgler we’re not going to nominate a Story Bridge, Brisbane Wheel, or even a Fortitude Valley, that’s for the normal, trendy, social media savvy people to do, we are champions of championing the forgotten, the obscure, the overlooked, the ugly.
Our selection actually no longer exists, which is even more reason to include in on a Monopoly board of Brisbane before the memory of the location is lost forever.
We talk of Doboy Station, a now abandoned station on the Cleveland line between Hemmant and Murrarie which saw the last train stop in 1993. The subsequent upgrade of the freight line to the Port of Brisbane has meant that any remnants of the platforms, shelters and overpass dubbed the “Stairs of Death” due to its missing planks and general movement in the smallest of breezes are now all gone, confined to the small part of the brain that remembers these things just for Pub Trivia nights. Gurgler contributors Harland Bulwer and myself were amongst the last, if not very last, passengers picked up in the small window in which Doboy Station operated.
That small window was a few hours in the morning and afternoon, as the station was the stop for workers at a nearby meatworks. For the rest of the days and most weekends, the train announcements on the platforms on any Cleveland train would include the phrase “except Doboy”. When the meatworks closed it meant that Doboy would excepted forever as it was decommissioned in 1993 as part of a timetable change that also saw the Pinkenba line close.
Just because the platform were only long enough for a few carriages for people to get on or off, just because the shelters were little more than a dilapidated wooden hut, just because walking over the stairs to the other platform may end in electrocution or tetanus, just because only a handful of trains stopped there any day doesn’t mean it deserves to be forgotten completely. And we certainly will try to not let that happen.
Doboy Station has been gone for over 20 years now, but certainly not forgotten. Not by us, or the tens of people who remember the name and wonder what happened to it. But it deserves a greater legacy than the one photo on Google and a brief mention on a railway fan forum. Oh, and this website of course. And a dedicated Facebook page with nowhere near enough Likes. You can find it here. Like it. Do it.
So with the Brisbane Monopoly being launched and the call going out for people to suggest some locations, there’s never been a better time to give Doboy Station the honour it deserves, and put a real obscure Brisbane location back on the map, or the board. We need your comment, like or vote on the Brisbane Monopoly Facebook page to get the momentum rolling. We need a ground swell of support.
Go to the Brisbane Monopoly Facebook page now.
To reminisce, we’ve got the last Citytrain map which featured the forgotten stop. Thanks to reddit.com. Now you’re in the mood, get to Facebook page for Brisbane Monopoly and cast your vote for a forgotten Brisbane icon.
