Germans in Bris Vegas

	Brisbane: hillier than you might think

Brisbane is an unexpectedly hilly place. For a first-time visitor, brought up on endless brochure photos of Australia's vast and barren outback, it can sometimes seem as though the only hummock in the entire land is at Ayres Rock. Here, though, the streets rise and fall like something lifted straight from San Francisco. Minus the trams of course. They were dispensed with in the 1960s, presumably because the demand for public transport was so underwhelming.

It's an incongruous city. Peaceful almost to the point of self-parody, the locals have their tongues wedgely firmly in cheeks (I think!) when they dub the place "Bris Vegas" or "BrisneyLand". Even the Interstate Highways are unknowingly comical with their large-letter signposts on the slip roads. "No Tractors, No Animals, No Pedestrians" they scream on one side. "Wrong Way! Go Back!" bellows the other in unmissable white-on-red characters. I can't imagine the M25 ever has such a problem.

It's a country town made good. The tuft of skyscrapers in the Central Business District is proof that Brisbane has shrugged off its reputation as a backwater, as indeed is the new-look Gabba – although this vast speckle-seated amphitheatre with room for 42,000 punters is so far removed from its roots that it's almost impossible to recall the grassy banks and dog track that once made the ground so unique. Impressive it most certainly is, and a fitting venue for Thursday's showdown of a lifetime. But the redevelopment is not to everyone's taste.

What remains on the outside of the ground is perhaps as revealing as what lurks within. Take the wonderfully monickered Vulture Street for instance, one of the most evocative names in the game. This is a road that turned out to be exactly as I imagined it. A little bit dingy, a little bit ugly, but strangely majestic nonetheless. Okay, so there weren't any big hook-beaked birds circling over the carcasses of road-killed ‘roos (to give my mind's eye its full and warped licence), but there was a wonderfully grotty 7-Eleven shopping centre, situated just a stone's throw from the main entrance to the ground.

Just imagine it. The best part of half the stadium's capacity may have cause to stop by in the coming week, and what will they be able to buy? There's not a souvenir shirt in sight. Instead, it's a choice of sweets and snacks; a Domino's Pizza; a change of clothes at the handily-situated Laundromat, and err ... a selection of porn and sex toys from the Gabba's very-own Adultworld. Brilliant. Either it's everything an Australian sports fan could possibly need, in a quick and convenient one-stop shop, or it's a sign that the Gabba has outgrown its surroundings in record time. Maybe it's both ...

Just up the road there is a no-less puzzling sight. The Brisbane German Club or "Deutscher Turn Verein", a white colonial town-hall of a building that provides its members with a bar, plus all the folk dancing, card games, skittles and mixed choirs an ex-pat could possibly need. An intriguing sign on the door says that "bone fide" visitors are welcome, which presumably must include those renowned Germanophiles, the Barmy Army. After a 10,000-mile trip, you could hardly refuse them a quick game of kegeln, could you?

Talking of the Barmy Army, their sightings have so far been limited, although the bars in Queen's Street, the city's central shopping spot, have already prostrated themselves to the invaders. St George's Crosses flutter from every table beneath banners proclaiming "We Are England ... The Mighty Mighty England", in tribute to that dreadful dirge of a signature tune. Once again, there's no denying it. Everyone loves England's cricket fans. Even, it seems, the Germans.

Aside from the verbal sparring, the build-up to Brisbane has been pretty low-key so far, and the news that Australia's favourite son, the Olympic swimmer Ian Thorpe, has dramatically announced his retirement will ensure an unexpected downturn in cricket's column inches tomorrow. ("Thorpe quits on eve of Ashes" - where have we heard that before?)

The host broadcasters, however, are clearly bracing themselves for an upturn in excitement. For a good 20 minutes during Australia's afternoon practice session, the Channel 9 soundchecker could be heard booming out from down the corridor: "1 ... 2 ... Yeaaaahh!", a mantra that could have become laptop-flingingly irritating if it hadn't been so essential. After all, when you've got Bill and Tony in the hot-seat for the first morning of the Ashes, it's prudent to have your decibel levels finely tuned.

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