Brisbane

Brisbane was born as a place of punishment so remote that even Sydney's convicts feared it. In 1824, when the colonial government wanted a secondary penal settlement to 'restore terror to transportation,' they sent Surveyor-General John Oxley north to find a site beyond escape. He discovered the Brisbane River—named for the governor who ordered the expedition—and established a settlement where over 11,000 lashes were recorded in a single eight-month period in 1828. For nearly two decades, this was Australia's gulag, a place where recidivist convicts were sent for the harshest treatment the empire could devise.

The Turrbal, Jagera, and Quandamooka peoples had inhabited this river valley for over 22,000 years before Lieutenant Henry Miller arrived with 30 convicts on the Amity in September 1824. The first European settlement at Redcliffe lasted mere months—mosquitoes and conflict with displaced Aboriginal peoples drove the colony upstream to the river's banks. By 1830, nearly 1,000 prisoners labored here. But the penal era ended quickly: by 1839 only 100 convicts remained, and in 1842 the area opened to free settlers. Brisbane became Queensland's capital when the colony separated from New South Wales in 1859—barely 35 years after the first convict ships arrived.

For a century, Brisbane remained a sleepy subtropical outpost while Sydney and Melbourne competed for national dominance. The city grew slowly, serving as a gateway to Queensland's pastoral and mining wealth but never attracting the cultural institutions or manufacturing base of its southern rivals. That began changing in the 1980s, and the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated a transformation that had been building for decades. Australians discovered they could work remotely—and Brisbane offered warmth, relative affordability, and lifestyle advantages that Melbourne and Sydney couldn't match. Since 2020, Queensland has led the nation in interstate migration.

Today Brisbane is Australia's fastest-growing major city, with an economy that reached A$201 billion in 2024—a 16% increase in just four years. The city has added 274,000 jobs since 2020. Mining remains Queensland's largest industry (A$61.6 billion), but Brisbane increasingly captures the professional services, tourism, and knowledge work that orbit the resource sector. Visitor expenditure hit a record A$13.7 billion in 2024, and the hospitality sector has grown 30% since 2020. House prices have overtaken Melbourne and Canberra, making Brisbane now the second most expensive Australian city for housing.

By 2032, the Olympic Games will complete Brisbane's transformation from punishment outpost to global stage. The Australian government is investing A$3.4 billion in venue infrastructure; the state is building a new 63,000-seat stadium at Victoria Park and reimagining entire precincts. But the Olympics are less cause than symptom—the city was already on a trajectory that the Games merely accelerate. The question for 2026 is whether Brisbane can build the housing and infrastructure to absorb the growth its lifestyle now attracts.