I am in Brisbane for work and it has been good to enjoy some very pleasant Northern Australian autumn weather with lovely sunshine, warmth (27˚C maximum today), and not a whisper of a wind. Meanwhile back in Melbourne there was windy, cool conditions (18˚C) and definitely not as pleasant as in Brisbane. Not that I got to enjoy the weather much, but at least it was to be able to walk out at lunchtime in between meetings and of course in the afternoon and evening.
Brisbane is a port and the capital of Queensland, Australia, and the nation's third largest city. It lies astride the Brisbane River on the southern slopes of the Taylor Range, 19 km above the river’s mouth at Moreton Bay. The site, first explored in 1823 by John Oxley, was occupied in 1824 by a penal colony, which had moved from Redcliffe (35 km northeast). The early name, Edenglassie, was changed to honour Sir Thomas Brisbane, former governor of New South Wales, when the convict settlement was declared a town in 1834. Officially, freemen could not settle within 80 km of the colony until its penal function was abandoned in 1839, but this ban proved ineffective.
A short-lived rivalry for eminence with the town of Cleveland was ended when the latter’s wharves burned in 1854, allowing Brisbane to become the leading port. Proclaimed a municipality in 1859, it became the capital of newly independent Queensland that same year. Gazetted a city in 1902, it was joined during the 1920s with South Brisbane to form the City of Greater Brisbane. Its municipal government, headed by a lord mayor, holds very broad powers. The Brisbane statistical division, including the cities of Ipswich and Redcliffe, has close economic and social ties to the city.
Brisbane is the hub of many rail lines and highways, which bring produce from a vast agricultural hinterland stretching west to the Eastern Highlands, the Darling Downs, and beyond. The city’s port, which can accommodate ships of 34,000 tons, exports wool, grains, dairy products, meat, sugar, preserved foods, and mineral sands. The metropolitan area, also industrialised with more than half of the state’s manufacturing capacity, has heavy and light engineering works, food-processing plants, shipyards, oil refineries, sawmills, and factories producing rubber goods, automobiles, cement, and fertiliser.
The city, the halves of which are connected by several bridges and ferries, is the site of the University of Queensland at St. Lucia (1909), Griffith University (1971), Parliament House (1869), the state museum (1855) and art gallery (1895), Anglican and Roman Catholic cathedrals, and many parks and gardens. Water is supplied from Lake Manchester, the Mount Crosby Weir, and the Somerset Dam. Oil is piped from wells at Moonie (West) and at Roma (Northwest), which also supplies natural gas. The population of the greater Brisbane area is currently just over two million people.
... I spent an amazing few days in Brisbane way back in the mid-80's. I would LOVE to return, maybe one day?
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