Defining Moments in Australian History: Brisbane founded
In 1817, Britain’s Colonial Secretary, Henry Bathurst, 3rd Earl Bathurst, raised concerns that transportation to New South Wales was no longer a deterrent to the “criminal class”. Word had spread of convicts’ successes in the new land, especially during Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s 1810–21 term.
Image credit: courtesy National Museum of Australia
Bathurst suspected transportation was no longer seen as a punishment short of hanging, but an option with some appeal. In 1819, he commissioned John Thomas Bigge to report on how transportation to NSW could be made a more effective deterrent.
Bigge’s reports made many detailed recommendations to restore “terror” to transportation, including the establishment of new penal settlements where recidivist convicts would face the harshest treatment.
In response, Governor Thomas Brisbane instructed Surveyor-General John Oxley in 1823 to explore Moreton Bay as a suitable penal settlement site remote from Sydney and other European communities, making it ideal for exiling the “worst” convicts.
James Cook had sailed past and named Moreton Bay in 1770. And in 1799, Matthew Flinders had spent 15 days navigating it, including landing at a site he called Red Cliff Point (now Redcliffe). Neither discovered the large river that emptied into the bay.
In March 1823, ‘ticket of leave’ convicts Thomas Pamphlett, John Finnegan and Richard Parsons, whose boat had been blown out to sea, landed on Moreton Island in the bay.
After receiving food, water, directions and possibly canoes from First Nations people, they continued their journey on the mainland, planning to walk to Sydney. In mid-June they came across a wide river which they followed upstream for several kilometres – the first European encounter with the Brisbane River.
On 29 November 1823 Oxley, who was beginning his Moreton Bay survey in HMS Mermaid, found Pamphlett and Finnegan on the beach at Point Skirmish, Bribie Island, while Parsons was hunting. After hearing their account of a large river, Oxley’s party set out on 1 December to investigate, with Finnegan as a guide.
They found the mouth of the river, which Oxley named after Governor Brisbane, rowed some 80km upstream, and returned to Sydney on 6 December to report that Redcliffe Point was a suitable penal settlement site.
On 12 September 1824, the Amity arrived at Redcliffe with 54 passengers, including Oxley, Lieutenant Henry Miller (Moreton Bay Penal Settlement’s first commandant), botanist Allan Cunningham, and about 30 convicts. Within months it was clear Redcliffe Point wasn’t suitable for permanent settlement, and a decision was made to relocate to the banks of the Brisbane River.
As Surveyor-General, Oxley had been tasked with finding a settlement location and on his Brisbane River surveys he’d favoured two sites – near present-day Breakfast Creek and Milton – but no moves were made to establish a settlement at either.
In May 1825, Commandant Miller and pilot John Gray decided to select the Brisbane Town site and found a suitable location a few bends up the river from Breakfast Creek. By 1826, the Moreton Bay settlement had about 200 convicts, but Brisbane was little more than an encampment of rough slab and timber dwellings.
The third commandant, Captain Patrick Logan, who in March 1826 replaced Captain Peter Bishop, who had a brief but ineffective term after Miller, began a public works program, replacing temporary structures with stone buildings.
In about 1828, a windmill was built at Spring Hill to grind grains into flour. It had two sets of millstones: one powered by wind sails, the other driven by a treadmill to punish convicts, something Logan notoriously pursued with exceptional brutality.
As per Bigge’s recommendations, Moreton Bay convicts suffered particularly harsh treatment; required to labour from dawn until sunset with misbehaviour punished by being fettered with leg irons, receiving up to 150 lashes or enduring time on the treadmill. Convicts in leg irons commonly worked the treadmill in shifts of up to 14 hours.
In 1827, Allan Cunningham became the first European to discover the fertile Darling Downs, west of Brisbane. Despite colonists’ desire for new land, more than 10 years passed before squatters occupied a run on the Downs.
Moreton Bay Penal Settlement acted as a brake on European development because no one was allowed within 80km of Brisbane without special permission. As a result, farmers faced problems selling their produce in Brisbane, or purchasing supplies.
From the 1830s, would-be landowners, entrepreneurs and merchants from Australia’s south asked the colonial government to open all of Moreton Bay to free settlers. The government didn’t need much convincing.
The cost of maintaining and guarding the penal settlement had already prompted it to recommend abolishing the convict colony.
Convict numbers were reduced from 1837, and in 1839 the government appointed a surveyor to map the area around Moreton Bay, in preparation for free settlement. On 10 February 1842, the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement was formally abolished. Queensland, with Brisbane as its capital, became a separate colony in 1859.
‘Brisbane founded‘ forms part of the National Museum of Australia’s Defining Moments in Australian History project.
