Pinkenba, QLD 4008

Take into account that I am a full-time university student without a car, and I have been living here for the twenty long and miserable years of my life. Pinkenba is the Antarctica of the world, the Pluto of the solar system. It lies in the shadow of the Brisbane airport, most visited by lost souls trying to find it. Here, mosquitoes top the food chain. They are the first thing that visitors complain about and the last thing on the minds of residents as they attempt to fall asleep to the all-too-familiar whiny buzzing of a little vampire hovering at their ears. Now, imagine a gigantic swarm of these bloodsuckers - a cloud of threatening black dots that makes you itch at the sight of it. I see those several times a day. Now imagine walking into one....I shall mercifully spare you the details.

Our neighbour, the Brisbane airport, provides us with ample entertainment. On a daily basis, we have the exciting opportunity to witness roaring planes taking off and landing. Even at the crack of dawn, the Brisbane airport provides us with this fantastically loud form of entertainment. But we are unphased - some, like myself, routinely wake up at the crack of dawn anyway, because we need to get to a more civilised part of Brisbane by 8am, and it takes an hour and a half to get there from dearest Pinkenba, our home.

Here, buses are few and far in between. There are only five buses every morning from 6:30-9:00am, with the first afternoon bus starting at 2:30pm. If you need to get anywhere in between 9:00am and 2:30pm (or miss the 9am bus), be prepared to go for a 3km hike through an industrial zone, with no footpath for three-quarters of the journey, walk narrow and slanted sides of roads with dust being blown into your face from the many passing trucks (not to mention the danger of being run over by one), stepping over industrial junk and carcasses (poor animals who had the misfortune of electrocution by overhead powerlines) and hating every minute of this miserable journey to reach the holy French St bus stop, where you shall stand and wait a further hour (less if you're lucky) to catch a bus.

How anyone can stand living here without going insane, I do not know. All I know is that the exhaustion associated with living here and conducting full-time study in St Lucia has, at multiple points in the past few years, driven me to literal tears. Thankfully I will be moving away from this hell of a suburb in the very near future and I will not miss it.