Yeah I've seen Kalinga park a few times, watched a bit of a game there but haven't played on it. Toowong sounds a bit iffy with all the uni students aroundTheres a ground at Toowong that we play on but it is rain damaged now, and there is one near Kalinga park in Clayfield that is better, but it is hard to get a game there. I think the good grounds are probably better than what you get up the Coast, but the rest is probably no better.
With Astroturf wickets, I find that as they get on they get plenty of sand and dirt infill embedded in them. Sometimes this is deliberate, they put sand infill in them to try and mitigate the excessive bounce of these wickets, but most of the time its inadvertent. I think the more they fill up with sand the less they turn. Maybe I should take a vacuum cleaner and see if it improves things
One good thing that the Council did recently was construct some nets at Herston park near the Royal Brisbane Hospital. They are closed in with Astroturf wickets, open to the public. You go down there and bowl a bit on weekends and all sorts of people come up, even a couple of spinners here and there.
We have one massively bouncy artificial pitch, which is terrible for me because that's my biggest downfall - bounce. What is worse is that there's one like that in the nets as well and a few years back that's where they would hold all the trials for selection into the zone team and I could never bat for my life on it and also they didn't spin an inch no matter how well I was bowling. Only got in the team once but then injured myself and couldn't play. Straight after school went into seniors and first year got selected in A Grade and surprised everybody because I was never able to get into a zone team. Pitches are pretty influencial in the game of cricket I've learned...
The Gympie nets are brilliant, though. They have 6 lined up with two fully enclosed all the way with a 15 step run up for fast bowlers also enclosed, with good lighting for night training and sound and visual proofing so you don't get distracted with the net next to you. There's also room to set up a speed gun and/or camera for video analysis. The local channel 9 cameraman plays cricket as well so he comes down with his full HD TV quality camera to video sometimes. The only slight problem is that the run ups are on a sort of smooth bitumen which wears down your shoes (you can't wear any shoes you'd normally play in) and gets pretty hot when you're out there in the middle of summer on a 35 degree day. Do you have access to good nets down there?