Brisbane History

Extract from the Wikipedia Article on the History of Brisbane

Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, is named for Sir Thomas Brisbane (1773–1860), British soldier and colonial administrator born in Ayrshire, Scotland. Sir Thomas Brisbane was Governor of New South Wales at the time that Brisbane was named.

European exploration

Prior to European settlement, the Brisbane region was occupied by Aboriginal tribes.

The region was first explored by Europeans in 1797, when Matthew Flinders made a landing at what is now Woody Point in Redcliffe. A permanent settlement in the region was not founded until a quarter century later, when New South Wales Governor Brisbane was petitioned by free settlers in Sydney to send the worst convicts elsewhere.

On October 23, 1823, Surveyor General John Oxley set out with a party in the cutter "Mermaid" from Sydney to "survey Port Curtis [now Gladstone], Moreton Bay and Port Bowen, with a view to forming convict settlements there". The party reached Port Curtis on November 5. Oxley suggested that the location was unsuitable for a settlement, since it would be difficult to maintain.

As he approached Point Skirmish into Moreton Bay, he noticed several Indigenous Australians approaching him, led by several white bedraggled timbergetters. The white men turned out to be shipwrecked timbergetters by the names of Thomas Pamphlett, Richard Parsons, John Finnegan and John Thomson who had left Sydney on March 21 of the same year to sail south from Sydney along the coast in search of cedar but during a large storm were pushed north of Sydney but did not know this, so went north trying to get back to Sydney, eventually getting shipwrecked on Moreton Island. They had been living with the Indigenous tribe for seven months.

After meeting with them, Oxley proceeded approximately 100km up what he later named the Brisbane River in honour of the then-Governor Brisbane. Oxley explored the river as far as what is now the suburb of Goodna in the city of Ipswich, about 20km upstream Brisbane's central business district. Several places were named by Oxley and his party including Breakfast Creek (at the mouth of which they cooked breakfast), Oxley Creek and Seventeen Mile Rocks.

Brisbane was home to the Jagera and Turrbal Aboriginal clans. Before European settlement, the land, the river and its tributaries were the source and support of life in all its dimensions. The river's abundant supply of food included fish, shellfish, crabs and shrimps. The good fishing places became campsites and the focus of group activities.

Establishment of a Penal Colony

In 1824, the first convict colony was established at Redcliffe Point under Lieutenant Miller. Meanwhile, Oxley and Allan Cunningham explored further up the Brisbane River in search of water, landing at the present location of North Quay. Only one year later, in 1825, the colony was moved south from Redcliffe to a peninsula on the Brisbane River, site of the present Central Business District, called "Mean-jin" by the local Turrbul inhabitants. The settlement was named "Edenglassie" (in honour of Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scotland) by British pioneers but was subsequently renamed to match the river. The official population of Brisbane at the end of 1825 was "45 males and 2 females".

The colony was originally established as a "prison within a prison" - a settlement, deliberately distant from Sydney, to which convicts who reoffended while serving their sentences could be sent as punishment. It soon garnered a reputation, along with Norfolk Island, as being one of the harshest penal settlements in all of [New South Wales].

Free settlement

As a penal colony, private settlements near the area was forbidden for many years. As the inflow of new convicts decreased steadily, the population began to decline. In 1838, the area was opened up for free settlers, as distinct from convicts. An early group of Lutheran missionaries from Germany were granted land in what is now the northside suburb of Nundah. In 1839 the first three surveyors, Dixon, Stapylton and Warner arrived in Moreton Bay to prepare the land for greater numbers of European settlers. From the 1840s settlers took advantage of the abundance of timber in local forests. Once cleared, land was quickly utilized for grazing and other farming activities. The convict colony was eventually closed.

The free settlers did not recognise the local aboriginal ownership and were not required to provide compensation to the Turrbul Aboriginal people. By 1869 almost all of the Turrbul people had died from gunshot or disease. The few remaining survivors escaped the region with the help of a settler, Thomas Petrie, (now associated with the suburb of Petrie in the Moreton Bay region, north of Brisbane).

Development in the early years of the colony of Queensland

Queensland was formally established as a self-governing colony of Britain separate from New South Wales in 1859.

Originally the neighbouring city of Ipswich was intended to be the capital of Queensland but it proved too far inland to allow access by large ships and so Brisbane was chosen as the capital instead. However it was not until 1902 that it was officially designated a city.

The 1893 Black February floods caused severe flooding in the region and devastated the city. Raging flood waters destroyed the first of several versions of the Victoria Bridge. Even though gold was discovered north of Brisbane, around Maryborough and Gympie, most of the proceeds went south to Sydney and Melbourne. The city remained an underdeveloped regional outpost, with comparatively little of the classical Victorian architecture that characterized southern cities.

The first railway in Brisbane was built in 1879 when the line from the western interior was extended from Ipswich to Roma Street Station. First horse-drawn, then electric Trams operated in Brisbane from 1885 till 1969. Tramway employees stood down for wearing union badges on 18 January 1912 sparked Australia's first General strike, the 1912 Brisbane General Strike which lasted for five weeks.

In an effort to prevent overcrowding and control urban development, the Parliament of Queensland passed the Undue Subdivision of Land Prevention Act 1885, resulting in Brisbane and other Queensland cities having very low population densities and covering large areas compared to similar Australian cities.

This legislation, together with the advent of efficient public transport in the form of steam trains and electric trams encouraged the spread of the city. Although the initial tram routes reached out into established suburbs such as West End, Fortitude Valley, New Farm and Newstead later extensions and new routes encouraged housing developments in new suburbs, such as the western side of Toowong, Paddington, Ashgrove, Kelvin Grove and Coorparoo. This was a pattern of development to continue through to the 1950s, with later extensions encouraging new developments around Stafford, Camp Hill, Chermside, Enoggera and Mt Gravatt. Generally the train lines linked established communities, although the Mitchelton line (later extended to Dayboro), before being cut back to Ferny Grove) did encourage suburban development out as far as Keperra.

Subsequently, with the availability of affordable private motor cars, land between tram and train routes was developed for settlement, for example Ekibin, Tarragindi, Everton Park, Stafford Heights and Wavell Heights.