Brisbane

The land and its first people

Meanjin, the place now called Brisbane, is Jagera and Turrbal Country. Maiwar, says the Museum of Brisbane, flows “in witness to ancient tales”. The Turrbal name for Mount Coot-tha, Kuta, means a place of wild or black honey, where there were many hives of native stingless bees.

When explorer John Oxley rowed into the river in December 1823, one of his guides was John Finnegan, a shipwrecked convict who had been living with local Aboriginal people.

The nature story

The river is Brisbane’s backbone, and the city grew along its bends. Its timber Queenslander houses were raised on stumps to catch the breeze, escape storm water on steep streets and keep termites out. After the floods of the 1890s, the stumps grew taller. To the west, Mount Coot-tha, part of the Taylor Range, rises to 287 metres.

What you will see

• Story Bridge. Begun in 1935 to create jobs in the Great Depression, it employed 400 people at its peak. It was designed by Brisbane-born engineer Dr John Bradfield, who had also worked on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It opened on 6 July 1940.
• City Hall. It took ten years to build (1920–1930) and cost almost a million pounds. At the time, only the Sydney Harbour Bridge was a bigger building project in Australia. The auditorium was inspired by Rome’s Pantheon, and the Museum of Brisbane is on level 3.
• South Bank. Queen Elizabeth II opened World Expo 88 on 30 April 1988, and it drew more than 18 million people. Afterwards, 42 hectares became South Bank Parklands, opened on 20 June 1992 with a man-made city beach. Nepal’s Expo pagoda, made from over 80 tonnes of hand-carved timber, still stands.
• Mount Coot-tha Summit Lookout. A kiosk has served visitors here since 1912. Below you, the river winds towards Moreton Bay.
• Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. Claude Reid opened it in 1927 with just two koalas, Jack and Jill. It is named after a huge hoop pine that guided visitors arriving by boat.

Wildlife and plants to look for

• Koalas at Lone Pine, which has also cared for platypus since 1974.
• Jacarandas, which come from South America and usually flower in October. Walter Hill most likely planted Australia’s first one in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens in 1864.
• Moreton Bay figs on Mount Coot-tha, some planted by two British princes in 1882.
• Native stingless bees, the “honey” in Kuta.

A little history

Oxley named the river for Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane. On 13 September 1824 Lieutenant Henry Miller landed convicts and soldiers at Redcliffe, which Aboriginal people called Humpybong. Eight months later the settlement moved to the north bank of the river, the heart of today’s city. Moreton Bay was a place for re-offending convicts, and nearly 2,400 men and 145 women lived at its depots. At the Windmill, built in 1828 to grind grain, up to 25 convicts at a time worked the treadmill for as long as 14 hours. The penal settlement closed in 1842, when the district opened to free settlers.