Brisbane
Australia's subtropical river city in Queensland
Sprawling along the lazy meanders of its namesake river, Brisbane is Australia's fast-growing subtropical capital of Queensland, a warm, easygoing city of riverside parks and outdoor living. Home to more than two and a half million people, it has shed an old reputation as a sleepy country town to become a confident metropolis preparing to host the 2032 Olympic Games. Hot, humid summers and mild winters draw people to its riverside beaches, leafy hills, and the surf coasts and rainforests within easy reach to north and south.
The city winds around the broad, brown Brisbane River, which loops back on itself repeatedly as it flows toward Moreton Bay on the Coral Sea. Low forested hills and ridges rise among the suburbs, and the metropolis sits at the centre of the rapidly growing South East Queensland region that stretches to the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast. The humid subtropical climate brings long, hot summers prone to dramatic afternoon storms and occasional river flooding, and short, dry, mild winters.
Brisbane began in 1825 as a harsh penal settlement for re-offending convicts, on the lands of the Turrbal and Jagera peoples, moving upriver from an earlier site at Redcliffe. Free settlement followed in the 1840s, and the town became the capital of the new colony of Queensland in 1859. For much of the twentieth century Brisbane grew quietly in the shadow of Sydney and Melbourne, but recent decades of strong migration have made it one of Australia's most dynamic cities and a future Olympic host.