Brisbane the city of sunshine

Brisbane is situated in the southeast corner of Queensland at latitude 27°28′S, longitude 153°02′E. The city straddles the Brisbane River, and its eastern suburbs line the shores of Moreton Bay. The greater Brisbane region lies on the coastal plain east of the Great Dividing Range.

Some of the major centres in greater Brisbane are:

* Ipswich - Home of the Queensland Rail workshop. The population has nearly doubled since 1994. Population: 129,000. * Logan City - A high-growth area in the Brisbane-Gold Coast corridor. Population: 171,292. * Redcliffe - Famous for brown sandy beaches and one of the longest bridges in the Southern Hemisphere which connects to the outskirts of the city to the Redcliffe Peninsula. Population: 51,723. * Caboolture - A dairy farming region to the north of Brisbane. Population: 115,386. * Pine Rivers - A shire associated with Brisbane. Population: 133,778. * Redland - A shire overlooking Moreton Bay on the east of Brisbane. Population: 124,000.

Brisbane has a subtropical climate with warm, mild winters and hot, moist summers. Brisbane is subject to high humidity, mainly from November through to April. Summer thunderstorms are common, and Brisbane frequently experiences severe thunderstorms, containing hail and severe winds, during summer months.

Climatic averages:

* Mean January maximum temperature — 29 °C (85 °F) * Mean January minimum temperature — 21 °C (69 °F) * Mean July maximum temperature — 20 °C (69 °F) * Mean July minimum temperature — 10 °C (49 °F) * Mean annual rainfall — 1146 mm (45.1 inches) * Wettest month on average — January, 160 mm (6.3 inches) * Driest month on average — August, 46 mm (1.8 inches)

Historical extremes:

* Hottest maximum temperature — 43.2°C (109.8°F), 26 January 1940 * Coldest minimum temperature — 2.3°C (36.1°F), 12 July 1894 and 2 July 1896 * Wettest month — 1026 mm (40.4 inches) of rainfall, February 1893 * Wettest day — 465 mm (18.3 inches), 21 January 1887 * Highest wind gust — 145 km/h (90 m/h)

The estimated population of the City of Brisbane is 938,384 (as of June 2003). Together with surrounding Local Government Areas, Brisbane has an estimated metropolitan population of 1,733,200 as of 2003.

Brisbane City Council is the most populous Local Government Area in Australia and is one of the largest cities in the world in terms of geographic area. Brisbane boasts Australia's highest rate of capital city population growth. The metropolitan population reportedly grew by 10.5% between 1998 and 2003.

Brisbane has a diverse and generally vibrant economy with many sectors and industries represented in the city's total production of goods and services.

Both white-collar and blue-collar industries are present, with white-collar industries such as information technology, financial services, higher education and public sector administration generally concentrated in and around the central business district and recently established office parks in the outer suburbs.

Blue-collar industries such as petroleum refining, stevedoring, paper milling, metalworking and QR railway workshops tend to be located on the lower reaches of the Brisbane River and in new industrial zones on the urban fringe.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s the Queensland state government has been developing technology and science industries in Queensland as a whole, and Brisbane in particular, as part of its "Smart State" campaign.

The government has invested in several biotechnology and research facilities at several universities in Brisbane. The Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland (UQ) St Lucia Campus is a large CSIRO and Queensland state government initiative for research and innovation that is currently being emulated at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Campus at Kelvin Grove.

According to the state government this QUT facility is intended to cross-fertilise with the UQ facility and make Brisbane a science and research hub of Australia and the region.

Unlike most other Australian capital cities, who have their urban areas controlled by dozens of different municipal authorities, Brisbane is controlled by the Brisbane City Council, the largest local government body (in terms of population) in Australia. The Council, formed by the merger of many small councils in 1925, has jurisdiction over most of the inner and outer suburbs, borders the Caboolture, Logan and Pine Rivers shire Councils.City Hall houses the Museum of Brisbane, as well as the Brisbane City Council.

The area of Brisbane city is split into 26 wards, which each elect a council member as a representative. The Lord Mayor is also elected by a popular vote, in which all residents must participate. Voting occurs every four years.

On 27 March 2004, former civil engineer Campbell Newman defeated incumbent Lord Mayor Tim Quinn in mayoral elections. Newman is a member of the Liberal Party and is only the second Liberal Lord Mayor of Brisbane.

he city is named for Sir Thomas Brisbane (1773–1860), British soldier and colonial administrator born in Ayrshire, Scotland.

In 1823, the explorer John Oxley landed at the Brisbane River and named it after Sir Thomas Brisbane, Governor of New South Wales and astronomer. In 1824, the first convict colony was established at Redcliffe Point. Only one year later, the colony was moved south from Redcliffe to a peninsula of the Brisbane River, called "Mean-jin" by the local Turrbul inhabitants. The settlement was originally named "Edenglassie" but subsequently re-named after the river. The colony was originally established as a "prison within a prison" - a settlement, deliberately distant from Sydney, to which convicts who re-offended while serving their sentences could be sent as punishment. It soon garnered a reputation, along with Norfolk Island, as being one of the harshest penal settlements in all of New South Wales.

Private settlement near the area was forbidden for many years, and the colony was sluggish in development. As the inflow of new convicts decresed steadily, the population began to decline. Finally, in 1842, the area was opened up for free settlement and settlers took advantage of the abundance of timber in the area. Grazing and farming took hold quickly on the fertile land of the coastal plain, but the convict colony was eventually closed.

By 1869 almost all of the Turrbul people had died. The few remaining survivors escaped the region with the help of a settler, Tom Petrie.

Queensland was formally established as a colony separate from New South Wales in 1859 and became self-governing. Brisbane was declared the capital, but it was not until 1902 that it was officially designated a city. Severe flooding in the 1890's devastated the city and destroyed the first of several versions of the Victoria Bridge. Even though gold was discovered north of Brisbane, around Maryborough and Gympie, most of the proceeds went south to Sydney and Melbourne. The city remained an underdeveloped, regional outpost, with comparatively little of the grandiose Victorian architecture evident in the southern cities.

In 1924, the City of Brisbane Act was passed, amalgamating many small local government areas to form the Brisbane City Council in 1925.

During World War II, many US forces were stationed in and around the city, and, for a time, it was the headquarters for General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Allied Commander, South West Pacific Area. Many buildings and institutions around Brisbane were given over to the housing of military personnel, with the University of Queensland converted to a barracks.

Brisbane marked the northern point of the "Brisbane Line" - a controversial defence proposal, allegedly formulated by the Menzies government, that would, upon a land invasion of Australia, surrender the entire continent bar the populated costal strip south of Brisbane. to the Japanese. The evidence for the existence of this plan remains a matter of contention, with trade unionists and other critics using it as evidence of Menzies' supposed enemy sympathies. There is very little doubt that the wholesale defence of the entirety of Australia's vast and sparesely populated countryside would have been highly impractical, but it seems unlikely that any Australian government would surrender the entirety of Northern Queensland without a fight.

On November 26 and November 27, 1942 conflict broke out between US and Australian servicemen stationed in Brisbane. By the time the violence had been quelled one Australian soldier was dead, and hundreds of Australian and US servicemen, and a small number of civilians were injured. Thousands of soldiers were involved in the battle on both sides. This incident, which was heavily censored at the time and apparently was not reported in the US at all is known as the Battle of Brisbane.

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