Today, Brisbane is a curious mixture of modern metropolis and colonial tropical city. The architecture of the city combines the spiers of Victorian churches with palm trees planted in front of skyscrapers of bluish glass, surrounded by vast parks. The special atmosphere of an ultra-modern metropolis and a pleasant climate that allows you to spend most of your time outdoors contribute to a calm and measured life typical of tropical cities. In Brisbane, the average temperature in summer is 20-27 degrees Celsius and in winter 20-21 degrees Celsius.
Brisbane is the capital of one of Australia’s most prosperous states, Queensland, and one of Australia’s most important cities. Combined with the excellent climate, this makes it an important center for conferences, seminars and exhibitions of world importance.
Brisbane Airport is one of the main international and local airports in Australia, so many travelers from exotic parts of Australia or Oceania stay here for one or two nights, waiting for the right flight or just to add variety to their long journey.
It was the discovery of the Brisbane River, named after the then Governor Thomas McDougal Brisbane, that began the colonization of the area. Brisbane, the modern administrative center of Queensled, is located 25 km from the sea on the river of the same name, which flows into the ocean in Moreton Bay. In 1829, the largest penal colony was located in this bay, in which about a thousand convicts were kept. Free colonists were allowed to settle at least 80 km from the bay. In 1842, the colony was closed, the convicts were transferred to another place, the area was declared a zone free for settlement, and the land was sold. Cattle breeders came here with their herds and settled in these lands.
The churches of St. John and All Saints. In the Brisbane Valley, the old properties of Bellevue and Caboonbah have been preserved. Ipswich, a small river port on the Brisbane River, linked rich farms from the Darling Valley to Brisbane. The colonial architecture of many buildings still testifies to past prosperity today. Maryborough, a port north of Brisbane, became a major export center for wool, sugar and timber.
In general, the colonization of the area was carried out slowly until 1867, when gold was discovered in Gympie. Brisbane slowly became the center of the area. Bridges were built that connected the northern and southern parts of the city, separated by a bend in the river. Commercial warehouses stretched along its banks, and soon a customs building appeared. A characteristic feature of Brisbane in the 1880s. there were Victorian churches and colonial banks.
Currently, the business center is not as big as in Sydney or Melbourne, and is located a block north of the river bend. Towers worthy of New York’s Wall Street are staffed by people dressed in business suits despite the tropical humidity.
Shops and shopping centers are concentrated on Adelaide, Albert, Edward streets and around the pedestrian center – Queen St. Mall. The multinational crowd, consisting of Australians, Greeks, Vietnamese, Koreans and Cambodians, is always in a hurry somewhere. Here, natives, distinguished by their peculiar skin tone – ocher color – play the local musical instrument didgeridoo, attracting Japanese tourists who think that this annoying monotonous sound comes from the depths of the past.
Restaurants and nightlife centers are concentrated in the City on Queen St. Mall and on the first floors of business skyscrapers that open restaurant terraces and dance floors by the Brisbane River on warm nights. When the velvet night descends on the city, it is illuminated from Kangaroo Point, on the other side of the river. To the north of the City is the Fortitude Valley area with a small Chinatown. In all directions from the center, within an hour’s drive by car, there are suburbs with beaches.
Brisbane seems to be created for lovers of flora and fauna. You can get great pleasure by visiting the Botanical Garden, which was founded in 1855 and is located in a bend formed by a bend in the Brisbane River, in the very center of the city; here you seem to be transported to another reality, you find yourself in the middle of an old engraving – from here, through a hedge formed by bearded date palms and giant banyans, you can see the towers with their facades of bluish glass – as if in front of you is a city of the future.
The Zoo is also worth a visit – more than a hundred representatives of the local fauna are gathered here, in the tropical mini-forest under the net you can see tree frogs with suction cups on their paws, black cockatoos that are on the verge of extinction, frogs with a snout instead of a nose, two-meter lizards, taipan snakes nicknamed “the killer”, lizards with a blue glowing tongue, carnivorous bats, and a whole hall of drowsy koalas adjoining the eucalyptus grove to make it easier for them to sleep their 18 hours a day.
It will be interesting to visit the Butterfly House – a large collection of giant Australian insects, among which there are stinging and aquatic species. Numerous spiders are shown on the screen, the bite of some of which is deadly. In the noctarium you can see scorpions and giant spiders, the world’s largest cockroaches and Hercules mites.
And finally, the tourist zoo Lone Pine – here the animals are kept in large pens, and tourists come here to pet koalas and take pictures with these adorable animals in their arms. Here you can feed kangaroos of various sizes, which are willingly eaten from your hands. The rest of the Australian fauna is represented by wombats, dingoes, possums and a large number of local colorful birds.
The climate in Brisbane is warm (hot in summer), subtropical with a predominance of sunny days. The city lies at the same distance from the equator as Miami, Johannesburg and Delhi.
Brisbane is always warm, even during the Australian winter (June-August). Although there is no winter as such, the best time to visit is from October to May.
The average ocean water temperature in the Brisbane area in summer (November-April) is 23-28 C, and in winter (June-August) about 20 C and very rarely drops below 18 C.
