- Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, Australia, sits along the banks of the Brisbane River.
The port and capital of Queensland State, Brisbane is one of Australia's largest cities. It is located on the southern slopes of the Taylor Range, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) west of Moreton Bay, which joins the Pacific Ocean. Sections of the city are connected by several bridges and ferries across the Brisbane River. The cultural center of Queensland, Brisbane is the site of the University of Queensland at St. Lucia, founded in 1909, and Parliament House, built in 1869. There are Anglican and Roman Catholic cathedrals, and many parks and gardens. In 1988 the city hosted Expo 88, a world's fair. Brisbane is a transportation center. Its many rail lines and highways bring produce from the vast agricultural hinterland that stretches west to areas known as the Eastern Highlands and Darling Downs. The city's port, which can accommodate ships of 34,000 tons, has the largest commercial dry dock in Australia. A container terminal on Fisherman's Island, at the mouth of the Brisbane River, was opened in 1980. Exports include wool, grains, and dairy products. The greater Brisbane metropolitan area contains more than half of the state's manufacturing capacity, housing heavy and light engineering works, food-processing plants, shipyards, sawmills, and factories that produce rubber goods, automobiles, cement, and fertilizer. Petroleum is piped in for refining from wells located to the west at Moonie, and to the northwest at Roma, which also supplies natural gas. Water is supplied from Lake Manchester, the Mount Crosby Weir, and the Somerset Dam. The site of the present city was first explored in 1823 by John Oxley and was occupied by a penal colony the following year. The early name, Edenglassie, was changed to honor Sir Thomas Brisbane, former governor of New South Wales, when the convict settlement was declared a town in 1834. Officially, freemen were not supposed to settle within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the colony until its penal function was abandoned in 1839. The city had a short rivalry with the town of Cleveland for prominence as Australia's leading port, but this came to an end when Cleveland's wharves were destroyed by fire in 1854. Proclaimed a municipality in 1859, Brisbane became the capital of the newly independent state of Queensland that same year. It officially became a city in 1902 and was joined with South Brisbane to form the city of Greater Brisbane during the 1920s. Brisbane's municipal government, headed by a lord mayor, holds very broad powers. The metropolitan area includes the cities of Ipswich and Redcliffe and portions of six surrounding shires. Population (2001 census), 1,627,535. |