About Bowen Hills Local
A one-person column about a small Brisbane precinct. Independent, not sponsored, written from inside the neighbourhood since 2017.
Bowen Hills Local is a one-person column. It has been running, in various shapes, since 2017. It was once a print zine that came out four times a year, then a Tinyletter, then a slightly broken WordPress site, and is now this. The throughline is that it is written from inside the precinct by someone who lives here and walks it every day.
The column is independent. It is not affiliated with any business named within. It does not take sponsorships. It does not run banner ads. It does not embed affiliate links. It is read by about eleven thousand people a month, give or take, depending on whether something dramatic has happened in the precinct that week.
Who writes it
Hannah Vye, mostly. I moved to Bowen Hills in 2016 by accident. I had been looking at a flat in West End, the lease fell through, the agent suggested a place near the old railway line in a precinct I had never heard of, and I have not moved since.
I write the column on Sunday afternoons, mostly at the corner cafe, occasionally at the wine bar courtyard if the weather is good. I do most of the photography, although there are guest photographers credited on individual posts.
Editorial position
The column does not write negative reviews. Not because we are afraid of pushback, but because the precinct is small, the kitchens are tight on margin, and a public takedown of a struggling restaurant does no good for anyone. If we have eaten somewhere and it was not for us, we leave it off the page. If we have eaten somewhere and it has been consistently good for years, we include it and we say so directly.
We do not chase exclusives. We do not break news. We are not a journalism outlet. We are a slightly-detailed neighbourhood diary that some of the venue owners read and roll their eyes at, fondly, we hope.
How the column gets paid for
It does not, mostly. The hosting bill is about eight dollars a month. The newsletter platform is free at our subscriber count. Hannah's time is not compensated. There is a tip jar via Ko-fi linked from the contact page if anyone has felt the column was worth a coffee, which a few dozen people do every year, and that goes some way to covering the time.
Corrections
If we have got something wrong on a page, the contact page is the fastest way to flag it. We update posts in place rather than running a separate corrections column, but the change is logged in the page footer with the date.
Read next
If you are new to the column, the Eat with us shortlist and the what's on calendar are the most-read pages. The longer-form essays sit in the Journal. For the directory of trades and small businesses we recommend around the precinct, see The Local List. To get in touch, the contact page is the easiest path.