History of Brisbane
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Brisbane's historical record
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.
In 1823, the explorer John Oxley and a party led by him landed at the Brisbane River and named it after Sir Thomas Brisbane, Governor of New South Wales and astronomer. He 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.
In 1824, the first convict colony was established at Redcliffe Point. Only one year later, 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 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.
Private settlement near the area was forbidden for many years, and the colony was sluggish in development. As the inflow of new convicts decreased steadily, the population began to decline. In 1838, the area was opened up for free settlement, beginning with a group of Lutheran missionaries from Germany who were granted land in what is now the northside suburb of Nundah. Larger numbers of free settlers in the 1840s took advantage of the abundance of timber in local forests inhabited by humans and wildlife that could be displaced with no legal recourse. Grazing and farming took hold quickly on the fertile land of the coastal plain, and the convict colony was eventually closed.
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, Tom Petrie, (now associated with the suburb of Petrie in Pine Rivers Shire, north of Brisbane).
Originally the neighbouring city of Ipswich was intended to be the capital of Queensland but Ipswich proved too far inland to allow access by large ships and so Brisbane was chosen as the capital instead. Ipswich as the Capital of Queensland was chosen after Charters Towers in North Queensland. Construction and planning to make Charters Towers the state's capital was well under way when the Gold Mining boom suddenly ran dry, which shocked and dismayed many people as the estimated reserve of gold was put close to 150 years. Ipswich was then chosen and rejected because of the transportation problems involved; in the 1800's transportation was a primary consideration in locating many of the Capital cities.
Queensland was formally established as a self-governing colony of Britain separate from New South Wales in 1859. Brisbane was declared the capital, but not until 1902 was it officially designated a city. Severe flooding in the 1890's devastated the city and 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. 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.
In 1924, the City of Brisbane Act was passed by the Queensland Parliament, amalgamating the Cities of Brisbane and South Brisbane; the Towns of Hamilton, Ithaca, Sandgate, Toowong, Windsor and Wynnum; and the Shires of Balmoral, Belmont, Coorparoo, Enoggera, Kedron, Moggill, Sherwood, Stephens, Taringa, Tingalpa, Toombul and Yeerongpilly to form the current City of Greater Brisbane, now known simply as the City of Brisbane, in 1925. To accommodate the new enlarged city council the current Brisbane City Hall was opened in 1930.
Brisbane during the Second World War
Image:The-MacArthur-Building.jpg
Due to Brisbane's proximity to the South West Pacific Area theatre of World War II (Second World War), the city played a prominent role in the defence of Australia. The city became a temporary home to thousands of Australian and American servicemen. Buildings and institutions around Brisbane were given over to the housing of military personnel as required. The present-day MacArthur Central building became the Pacific headquarters of U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, and the University of Queensland campus at St Lucia was converted to a military barracks for the final three years of the war.
Brisbane marked the northern point of the "Brisbane Line" - a controversial defence proposal, allegedly formulated by the Menzies government, that would, upon a land invasion of Australia, surrender the entire continent bar the populated coastal strip south of Brisbane to the Japanese.
On November 26 and November 27 1942 rioting broke out between US and Australian servicemen stationed in Brisbane. By the time the violence had been quelled one Australian soldier was dead, and hundreds of Australian and US servicemen were injured along with civilians caught up in the fighting. [1] Hundreds of soldiers were involved in the rioting on both sides. This incident, which was heavily censored at the time and apparently was not reported in the US at all, is known as the Battle of Brisbane.
Post-War Brisbane
Brisbane has been inundated by four severe floods of the Brisbane River — in 1864, 1893, 1897 and 1974. A comprehensive flood mitigation scheme was instituted for the Brisbane River catchment area in the aftermath of the 1974 flood. Since then the city has remained flood free during unbroken cycles of drought, locust plagues and outbreaks of infectious, insect-born diseases including malaria, Dengue fever and Ross River virus. During this
period real estate values in Brisbane have risen 15 fold.
In the 1980s Brisbane came of age as a metropolis in its own right, finally discarding its perceived image as a "big country town" of little importance. The city hosted two important events that attracted international attention - the Commonwealth Games in 1982 and Expo '88 in 1988. These events coincided with a massive growth in urban development and population in metropolitan Brisbane, a boom that is yet to cease.
Brisbane's historical timeline
- 1849 Brisbane School of Arts established
- 1862 Old Government House is completed
- 1867 Parliament House opens
- 1893 Brisbane floods
- 1899 Queensland Museum moves into "Exhibition Hall" (later called the Old Museum), at Gregory Terrace, Bowen Hills.
- 1909 Government House opens at Bardon
- 1909 University of Queensland opens near Parliament House
- 1927 Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary founded
- 1928 Sir Charles Kingsford Smith lands in Brisbane, from San Francisco, USA,
after the first flight across the Pacific Ocean - 1930 Brisbane City Hall opened
- 1939 Forgan Smith building completed at the St. Lucia campus of the University of Queensland. (Forgan Smith building was named after the, then, Premier of Queensland)
- 1942 General Douglas MacArthur arrives in Brisbane and takes offices in the AMP building (later called MacArthur Central) for the
Pacific campaign during World War II - 1946 Following a delay caused by World War II the University of Queensland begins its move from George Street, Brisbane, to its
St. Lucia campus, which it completes in 1972 - 1965 Queensland Institute of Technology (later Queensland University of Technology) established
- 1974 Brisbane River flooding, the result of continual heavy rain from "Cyclone Wanda", causes major damage across city
- 1982 Commonwealth Games
- 1984 Queensland Performing Arts Centre opened
- 1988 Expo 88 held at reclaimed industrial land at South Brisbane
- 1989 Queensland Institute of Technology changed status to Queensland University of Technology. (The decision to upgrade the QIT to a University in it own right was a result of the high quality and excellence of the teaching and research within the QIT, and was taken prior to the Dawkins reforms)
- 1991 International Convention of Lions Clubs International
- 2001 CHOGM conference, scheduled for Brisbane, but postponed after heightened security concerns resulting from terrorist attacks on New York City. Instead it was held in Coolum in early 2002
- 2002 7th annual conference of the World Wide Web consortium
- 2003 International Convention of Rotary International
