Yes, the cliches about my suburb are all true. Roll your eyes if you must

Newstead is thought of as one of the most expensive suburbs in Brisbane. Could people really be paying $9 for a coffee? Over $150 a week for gym membership?

Let me put that rumour to rest. It’s 100 per cent true. And I’ve made my peace with that.

As a 30-something professional with a penchant for activewear and a comically small dog, I know I’m in the crosshairs as a Newstead cliche.

But beyond the headlines like the $80 truffle pizza and the supposedly redundant pedestrian green bridge I have found more of a community here than anywhere else I’ve lived in Brisbane.

High-rise, high-density living is in full swing here, with cranes looming overhead and each building approved seemingly higher than the last.

It’s come a long way from the barren industrial land I remember driving past on the way to the airport when I left Brisbane for Sydney in the mid-2010s.

A decade later, the famous 1887-built gasometer – once the lone identifying structure in the suburb – can barely be seen, dwarfed by apartment buildings and surrounded by Yo-Chi, restaurants, and pubs where a pint of humble XXXX swings close to $20.

The moniker Newstead couldn’t be more fitting, as I look around and see a new way of living and a type of community that is unique to our little corner.

A mix of retirement living and one and two-bedroom apartment buildings sees a cross-section of young and old. My 90-year-old neighbours can be found chatting to 20-something Instagrammers at the dog park.

In suburbia, older residents often find their homes becoming an island, their only lifeline being taxis or reliance on families. In Newstead, with doctors and dentists taking up as much real estate as artisanal bakeries, both the young and the old can be liberated from car ownership, with necessities all within walking distance.

The barbell demographics have produced one particularly amusing trend: around the 4006 you’re just as likely to see a dog in a pram as a baby, with most couples having to sell up and move when it comes to having a family.

So what is it with all the dogs? Walking around, anyone would think a cavoodle was a requirement for signing a lease here.

Anyone would think a cavoodle was a requirement for signing a lease here.

Chatting with friends whose dogs go to daycare with my Pomeranian (you’ll find options from around $50-$70 a day, and about half a dozen doggy daycares within a kilometre of the Gasworks), many of us got our pooches during the pandemic.

Those of us locked out of the Australian dream of house and yard seem to have thrown our hands in the air, stopped saying “I’ll get a dog when I buy a house” and simply found a way to make it work.

A lot of the luxuries Newstead is famous for are a result of this attitude. And with house values increasing tenfold in our lifetime, why not enjoy the moment and get that extra shot of flavoured cold foam on your oat matcha latte?

Without the luxury of space in our homes, we do our socialising in parks, restaurants, cafes, bars, breweries and gyms.

The near-legendary Total Fusion gym is perhaps the prime example. The hundreds a week a Wellness Membership costs may be eye-watering for some. For the freelancers who work in its pleasantly shaded courtyard and the pilates mavens who cool off with scented towels, it’s a worthwhile expense.

These third spaces mean, shockingly, that people actually form connections in real life: romances sparked at Range Brewing or KT’s famous run clubs. What some see as too much development can have happy consequences.

It’s not to say we don’t have problems. With Skyring Terrace already buckling under the traffic, it’s hard to see how we’ll manage with new developments such as Little Italy on Longland Street set to add another 1000 apartments to the hundreds currently underway.

I would like to see more public green space required of developers, rather than overburdening our postage-stamp-sized dog park.

As the housing crisis forces other parts of our city to build up, residents of Newstead are already navigating a world where the ideal might not be a block of land, but access to a heated pool, or a nice view from a tiny kitchen.

There’s a price to pay for convenience – and boy are we paying it – but for a lifestyle that involves walkability, connection, and just a touch of glamour, for many it’s worth it.

So roll your eyes if you must as you walk past the influencers posing just-so with their fro-yo or arranging a perfect tableau of oysters and cocktails. But we love our little slice of yuppy (and puppy) paradise.

Get alerts on significant breaking news as it happens. Sign up for our Breaking News Alert.