To posit Queensland's modernism may seem like an oxymoron. Queensland is often the butt of the southern states' jokes. North of its more cultured and intellectual sibling-states (or so popular perception would have it), Queensland is 'backward', naïve, behind the times, provincial. According to this mythology, Brisbane is a glorified country town, Queenslanders refuse daylight saving for the sake of their very sensitive cows and curtains, and there is very little 'culture' to mention.