Brisbane History

      The city is named after Sir Thomas Brisbane, Scottish astronomer, British 
	  soldier and Governor of the colony of New South Wales in September 1822  
	  when the British government instructed him to explore the possibility of 
	  establishing a new penal colony at Moreton Bay, Port Curtis or Bowen.

      So he duly despatched the explorer John Oxley who reached Moreton Bay in 
	  November 1823. Soon after his arrival he found three escaped convicts who 
	  told Oxley that their boat had been washed up on the shores of Moreton 
	  Island. They had been rescued by the local aborigines,  from whom the 
	  convicts had learned about the river.  The convicts then led Oxley to the 
	  stream, and he named it the Brisbane River after the governor of the colony.

      Oxley returned to Sydney with news of his discovery.  And the following 
	  year Governor Brisbane sent the explorer back to Moreton Bay with the new 
	  settlement's first military commander, Lieutenant Henry Miller; the botanist 
	  Allan Cunningham; a doctor; and storekeeper; 14 soldiers and 29 convicts.  So 
	  in 1824 the penal settlement that would become the city of Brisbane was 
	  established at Redcliffe Point on Moreton Bay.

      When the Chief Justice Forbes arrived in December 1824 it was decided that 
	  the colony should be called "Brisbane" in recognition of the Governor's role 
	  in the founding of the colony. 

      However,  it became obvious that the choice of location was not satisfactory,  
	  and in July 1825 the colony was relocated to the present site of North Quay 
	  on the Brisbane River just south of Brisbane's central business district.

      In March 1826 Captain Patrick Logan was appointed the new commander of the 
	  settlement, and during the next four years it gained the reputation as the 
	  most cruel in the colony.  Perhaps unsuprisingly Logan was murdered in 1830.

      The colony made slow progress and the population of the area dropped because 
	  of the lack of new convicts and the distance from Sydney. The penal part of 
	  settlement was abandoned in 1839 and by 1840 all surviving convicts had 
	  returned to Sydney. Brisbane then became a free town with the area thrown 
	  open to settlers in 1842 after which grazing and farming established quickly 
	  on the fertile land of the coastal plain.

      Those free settlers then began one of the greatest land grabs of all time and 
	  consequently encountered fierce aboriginal opposition. At that time Queensland 
	  was the most densely populated area of Australia, supporting over 100,000 
	  aboriginal people in around 200 tribal groups.  The aboriginals had probably 
	  been in possession of Australia  for more than 50,000 years before the arrival 
	  of the British, so presumably they felt that they had some prior claim to the 
	  land.  But by the turn of the century, the aboriginal people had been run off 
	  their lands and the white authorities had set up reserves for the survivors.