Trent Dalton’s Gravity Let Me Go: Is Jubilee a real suburb?

What a month September was for Brisbane! Three grand final wins: the Brisbane Broncos, the Brisbane Broncos Women, the Brisbane Lions, plus all the excitement of Brisbane Festival. Amid all that, Australia’s number 1 author and Brisbane’s favourite scribe Trent Dalton released his fourth novel, Gravity Let Me Go. It mines parts of Dalton’s life, including his 'compulsion' and 'storytelling addiction'. And just like in Lola in the Mirror and Boy Swallows Universe, Brisbane is again the star.  

Set in the suburb of Jubilee, Gravity Let Me Go is a murder mystery: the story of beleaguered crime journalist Noah Cork who lives with his wife, Rita, and their two daughters. The book opens on publication week of Noah’s provocative true-crime exposé called Anonymous Source. Noah’s excited, he’s nervous, he’s in pain, he’s hanging on by a thread. Noah is convinced that his debut book about a grisly murder he uncovered round the corner is his one shot at success.  

A perfect setting, an (im)perfect crime 

In the novel, Jubilee is a suburb where nothing bad ever happens. But Noah has exposed its underbelly and his neighbours are not knocking on his door with thank-you hampers. Rita insists that 'Claude Monet turns up in Jubilee every day at 5 p.m. to paint us a pink-orange sunset' – the sort of sunset this suburb deserves. 'Kind and decent people here in Jubilee,' Noah says. 'Not the murdering kind.' Unfortunately, the stranger who left a note in Noah’s letterbox, which led him to the remains of a missing woman, has been back in touch. 'Murder was found six months ago in Jubilee and it can’t be unfound.' 

The book is filled with dozens of references to real people (one of Dalton’s favourite authors, Geraldine Brooks, gets a mention) plus real events and places in Brisbane (Livid Festival 2000, Indooroopilly, Stafford Skate Centre, Bunnings, Toowong Cemetery – even State Library of Queensland). 

Is Jubilee a real suburb?  

After all this attention to detail, the questioning reader might wonder if Jubilee is a real suburb.  

The answer? Sort of!  

Maps in the John Oxley Library show the history of Jubilee Township, on Yuggera and Turrbal Country. In a neighbourhood in Bardon, north-west of Brisbane’s CBD, blocks of land at 16 perches each, went to public auction on 18 June 1887. An ad from the Queensland Figaro on 11 June celebrates Jubilee as the 'West End of the city of Brisbane'. Located in the parish of Enoggera and a stone’s throw from Ithaca Creek, Jubilee will be 'free from inundation in the severest FLOODS'. The ad boasts that residents will be able to catch an omnibus to Ashgrove or simply sit and gaze at the mountains.  

But Dalton creates his imagined Jubilee apart and arguably further north-west as a standalone suburb. In an interview on ABC Radio National, Dalton admits he came close to setting Gravity Let Me Go in the actual suburb where he lives – but at the last minute his mum told him to change it!  

Fit for a Queen 

The original Jubilee Township was named on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee in 1887. Dalton blends fact and fiction, with Noah explaining in Gravity Let Me Go that in '1977, the Queensland Place Names Board renamed it Jubilee in honour of Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee marking twenty-five years in the big gold chair.' (Side note: fans of the Queensland Place Names Board can read this quick explainer about how some suburbs get their names.)   

Jubilee, part of the 4065 postcode, is beloved by locals. But over time, all suburbs find themselves in flux. In the real Jubilee, between 1920 and 1931, Victoria Street was renamed Carmel Street, however, Crown Street and Royal Row remain to this day. The 4-acre Jubilee Park in Bardon has been around for a while, as noted in Brisbane Statistics 1941, which also lists a new bus route that took 600,000 passengers from 'Jubilee Estate' to 'the Gardens' between 1940 to 1941. There’s a touch of the Bluey about Gravity Lets Me Go in the joy audiences can feel identifying hyper-specific but slightly off-kilter places and objects such as Noah’s observation of the 'blue and yellow council bus. The moss-green council bus stop'. 

Somewhere over the (Brisbane) rainbow  

Other sites in Gravity Let Me Go are veiled representations of real places: Noah follows a clue that takes him to the cemetery behind Jubilee Uniting Church, a 'sprawling red and yellow brick church that could pass as a large-scale work of cubist art'. There is no such church, but it bears a resemblance to The Gap Uniting Church (complete with graveyard out the back). The Jubilee Police Station, site of much of Noah’s tensions, is situated on Waterworks Road beside 'Drake Bridge Reserve playground'. If you, too, had to report that a driver tried to kill you with their Toyota Hilux after a long day as a debut author, you could visit The Gap Police Station then hop the fence to de-stress on the slippery dip at the real Walton Bridge Reserve playground.  

All authors play with fact and fiction, borrowing from the real and the imagined. In Boy Swallows Universe, Dalton asked us to turn our attention to Darra and Bracken Ridge. In Lola in the Mirror, he shone a light on Brisbane’s scrapyards and bridges and underpasses. How great to see Brisbane showcased so fully again in Gravity Let Me Go as Dalton brings his keen eye to the inner-west and places familiar and dear to so many.