I never ate at Oxley’s on the River; the restaurant that hung weightless over the Brisbane River on a web of poles like it was floating. But if you ate there in the 2000s and used a serviette to mop up a little lobster or a dab of wine, there’s a good bet our hands were (almost) touching.

Oxley’s opened in Milton around Expo ’88, under the similar name of Oxley’s Wharf. I don’t know when the whole car park arrangement started, but by the 2000s, Oxley’s on the River remained a glassy structure in still-sorta-industrial-looking Milton, hovering on the water and glowing at night.

Seven days a week, from 6.30 to 9pm plus midnight to 2am on weekends, an Oxley’s staffer was posted to the car park that belonged to the business centre over Coronation Drive. This job was famously held by my friend James – who was probably the coolest person I had ever met. James had not gone to my high school, but had been friends with the slightly older people there whom I wanted to be friends with. I went over to his house one day and left with 20 burned CDs, hand-labelled with Stereolab, Pavement, DJ Shadow. We’d stayed friends since graduating, and I........

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