My suburb had to fight to be recognised as a suburb. You probably haven’t even heard of it

“Wheeeere?” Usually that’s the response you get from someone when you tell them you live in Gordon Park – even if they’ve lived in Brisbane their entire life. It is the suburb the city forgot.

One of Brisbane’s smallest suburbs, Gordon Park began life as a locality in 1975, upgraded to a suburb in 1992 thanks to campaigning locals. Yet it’s true Gordon Park has always been better defined by what’s around it.

On one side, there’s Lutwyche, which, with all due respect, has little to offer besides bumper-to-bumper traffic and a Bermuda Triangle of supermarkets – a Coles, a Woolies, an Aldi – all under the one roof at a shopping centre locals dub Slutwyche (for the over-abundance of offerings).

On the other, there’s Stafford, where you can go for a late-night Kmart sticky beak or a movie at the empty Hoyts, then walk home with a questionable kebab under your arm.

Completing the suburban Pythagoras theorem is Kedron, the favourite of the Gordon Park neighbours thanks largely to Kedron Brook. One side is dedicated to doggos, who can be seen sprinting along the grass and dive bombing into the Brook below any time of day, any day of the week. The other side is paved, a popular spot for joggers, walkers, the pram brigade and 14-year-olds keen to pop a wheelie on their electric bikies.

Kedron Brook may look like little more than a trickling creek, but anyone who has had an evening stroll there at sunset can’t deny it’s what Kacey Musgraves would describe as golden hour. Walking that path under pink and blue Paddle Pop skies, you’ll bump into your neighbour, or your neighbour’s neighbour, also trying to get their steps in.

(Does a particular part of the brook have a resident bull shark? Yes, yes it does. But like Gordon Park, that shark is quite small.)

Gordon Park and its surrounding suburbs have a local character called the Flower Guy. No one actually knows his name, he’s just always been called the Flower Guy. In a pair of knee-high socks, hi-vis shirt and freshly dyed hair, he walks around with a ziplock bag full of yellow flowers that he hands out with a smile. The flowers are technically weeds, but it’s the thought that counts.

Our suburb is named after that eminent Victorian, General Charles Gordon. Digging into the history of any colonial-era British figure of note is priming yourself for a jump scare – a human rights violation here, massacre there – yet accounts differ of General Gordon. Variously depicted as a patriot, a fanatic, a martyr and an alcoholic, he had a tendency to befriend the local forces he’d been sent to oppress, until his bosses would get annoyed and he’d be moved on, then the cycle would repeat. Not that you’d have any clue about any of that wandering around the modern-day Gordon Park, but streets such as Khartoum Street and Suez Street are nods to his storied career.

During the day, it can look like any other suburb in Brissie: street after street of Queenslanders that no one can afford to live in anymore and footpaths that go for a few metres before ending abruptly by connecting to nowhere. But sunrise and sunset are the times when the suburb comes alive.

I’ll often get up at 4.30am, check Surfline.com, then fang it out of the city with surfboards in the back of my van. Gordon Park is at its prettiest at sunrise. Life seems to erupt from the unofficial town centre: Kit Gloves Coffee, which opens at 5.

A genuine hole-in-the-wall, it’s the beating heart of the 4031 postcode. Run by Vee, whose signature bob reminiscent of Edna ‘E’ Mode from The Incredibles also makes up the cafe’s logo, it’s not a zip-in, zip-out kind of place. People come to get a coffee, probably three, and they linger: incidentally bumping into neighbours or making new friends there by chance.

Before dawn, there’s already a crowd perched on stools out the front. Those who can’t stop toot a horn or wind down the window to have a chat while they wait at the lights – often to Jeff, who runs Brisbane’s sneaky best bowls club The Boo, just down the road in Newstead.

In summer, dinner parties my flatmates have thrown stretch from the late afternoon to evening, into the wee hours of the morning. Storms are observed with appreciative ooohs and aaahs off the back deck as lightning crackles overhead. The neon blue cross from one of the nearby Catholic schools illuminates half the suburb at night like a leftover prop from a Baz Luhrmann movie.

Sitting on a balcony, you might be more likely to hear a yelling match on Stafford Road a few streets over than a chorus of birds at dawn, but hey, it’s still Brisbane, even if it can feel like a little bubble within it. Gordon Park isn’t a suburb that has much going on and, frankly, that’s the appeal.