People think my suburb is just the shopping centre. For better or worse, we do orbit it

August 3, 2026 — 5:00am

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Before I moved here, I thought “Carindale” was the shopping centre. These days, I know it as a family-friendly suburb with more buses than you can count, and a distinct lack of local coffee shops.

In my defence, the shopping centre called Carindale existed before the suburb did (opening in 1979). To this day, the mall, now Westfield Carindale, still has an indelible impact on the time and space of this place. It’s a black hole, and we orbit for better or worse.

I’ve seen Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, so I know that when you get close to a black hole, time slows down. It can even appear to stop. That rings true for Carindale. For much of the past decade, the suburb has felt stuck.

When we moved here over a decade ago, Carindale seemed full of possibility. The Greendale Way shopping centre development is local folklore and still shared by real estate agents as “the next big thing” since the planning application was first approved nearly 20 years ago. Some are eager for an alternative to the Westfield whirling dervish, while others wonder why anyone would develop anything so close to a black hole.

That appears to be the recurring theme, and likely the reason for our lack of flat whites that don’t involve a hunt for a Westfield parking space.

As Westfield continues to expand, it........

© Brisbane Times