Brisbane's Colonial Past: Historical Walking Tour Through Queensland's Capital

Brisbane began its colonial life in 1824 as the Moreton Bay Penal Colony, established as a place of secondary punishment for reoffending convicts. The colony operated until 1842, and while much of this early infrastructure has vanished, key remnants offer a window into this brutal chapter of Queensland history.

My exploration begins at the Old Windmill on Wickham Terrace, Brisbane's oldest surviving European building. Constructed by convicts in 1828, this stone tower initially ground grain before being repurposed as a punishment site where convicts trudged endless hours on a treadmill. Standing before this stolid structure, I'm struck by how mundane architecture can mask extraordinary suffering—a pattern repeated throughout colonial Australia.

A short walk downhill leads to the old Commissariat Store, now the Royal Historical Society of Queensland museum. Built in 1829, it's one of only two surviving convict-era buildings in Brisbane. For a modest $7 entry fee, you can examine artifacts excavated from beneath the floorboards and gain insights into daily colonial life. What particularly moved me was finding a small display acknowledging the Turrbal and Jagera peoples' dispossession that made this settlement possible—a rare acknowledgment in older Australian museums.

As I walked these sites, I found myself reaching for my pocket notebook to jot observations about how colonial history is presented. After years of fieldwork, I've found that writing impressions in real-time captures nuances that photography misses—especially regarding whose stories are centered and whose are marginalized in historical narratives.

What's now Brisbane's main shopping precinct began as a rough track connecting the penal settlement to the Commissariat Store. After walking through the City Botanic Gardens (established in 1855 as Queensland's first public garden), I emerged onto Queen Street to trace this colonial thoroughfare.

The most striking heritage building here is the Treasury Building, completed in 1889, which housed government offices before its controversial conversion to a casino in the 1990s. Its Renaissance revival architecture showcases the wealth generated during Queensland's gold rushes and early pastoral expansion—wealth built on land taken from Indigenous peoples without treaty or compensation.

Nearby stands the General Post Office (1872) with its iconic clock tower, and City Hall (1930) with its magnificent auditorium and free museum in the basement. These buildings represent Brisbane's transition from colonial outpost to self-governing entity within the British Empire.

For lunch, I ducked into the historic Gresham Bar on Queen Street, housed in a heritage-listed building from 1881 that once served as the Queensland National Bank. With its dark wood paneling and Victorian details, it offers an atmospheric spot to rest weary feet while contemplating how banking and commerce drove colonial expansion.

As an anthropologist interested in material culture, I'm always examining how buildings reflect power relationships. The grandeur of these colonial administrative buildings—their imposing facades, their classical motifs borrowed from European traditions—speaks volumes about how British settlers sought to legitimize their presence through architectural statements of permanence and authority.

No historical exploration of Brisbane would be complete without acknowledging the ongoing presence and perspectives of the Traditional Owners. After crossing Victoria Bridge, I headed to Kurilpa Point, where the Brisbane River meets South Brisbane. This area, whose name means 'place of water rats' in the Turrbal language, offers important counterpoints to the colonial narrative.

The Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) and State Library of Queensland both feature significant Indigenous Australian art collections and cultural materials. While not colonial buildings themselves, they house important records and artistic responses to colonization. The State Library's kuril dhagun Indigenous space regularly hosts exhibitions on Aboriginal history and contemporary issues—during my visit, a powerful display examined the frontier conflicts that occurred throughout Queensland.

Nearby, the Maiwar Green riverside walkway features indigenous plantings and interpretative signage about traditional uses of the river. I spent an hour here sketching the landscape and reflecting on how dramatically European settlement transformed this environment. For those interested in documenting their own journey through Brisbane's historical landscape, I recommend a waterproof field notebook. During Queensland's unpredictable autumn showers, I've had regular notebooks ruined, but these weatherproof options have saved my field notes countless times.

What struck me most was how this area demonstrates the resilience of Indigenous knowledge and presence despite the colonial project's attempts at erasure. The very name 'Brisbane' (after a Scottish colonial administrator) overlays the original names for this place and its features—names that reflected millennia of connection to Country. Yet these original names and stories persist, increasingly acknowledged in public spaces and cultural institutions.

To understand Brisbane's colonial era beyond government buildings and penal institutions, I headed to Paddington, a hill-hugging inner suburb filled with worker's cottages from the late 1800s. These modest timber homes with their distinctive corrugated iron roofs and verandahs tell stories of ordinary colonists—the laborers, tradespeople, and domestic workers who built Brisbane but rarely feature in official histories.

The steep streets of Paddington offer excellent vantage points for photography, particularly from the elevated position of Ithaca War Memorial in Paddington Memorial Park. From here, you can capture rows of colonial cottages against the backdrop of the modern city—a visual representation of Brisbane's historical layers.

Many of these cottages have been lovingly restored, their characteristic 'VJ' (vertical joint) walls and lattice screens preserved while interiors have been modernized. Walking these residential streets offers insights into how colonial architectural forms adapted to Queensland's subtropical climate—raised foundations for air circulation, wide verandahs for shade, and high ceilings to combat the heat.

For those interested in architectural photography, I recommend bringing a compact tripod to capture the low-light details of verandahs and the dramatic sunset views across the colonial roofscape. Brisbane's autumn light creates particularly beautiful conditions as the late afternoon sun bathes these weatherboard facades in golden hues.

What fascinates me as an anthropologist is how these humble dwellings represent the democratization of colonial architecture—the adaptation of British building traditions to local conditions and materials, creating something distinctively Queensland. While government buildings mimicked European grandeur, these cottages evolved into something uniquely suited to this place.

My final stop explored a less-celebrated aspect of Brisbane's colonial history—the Breakfast Creek area, where stories of cross-cultural encounter and conflict played out. This riverside location was significant to the Turrbal people long before European arrival and became a site of early contact between Aboriginal people and colonists.

The heritage-listed Breakfast Creek Hotel (1889) stands as a monument to colonial-era architecture with its distinctive wrought iron lacework and wide verandahs. However, the deeper history lies in the surrounding area, where the Indigenous leader Dalaipi met with European settlers in the 1820s and where later conflicts occurred as settlement expanded.

Nearby Newstead House (1846), Brisbane's oldest surviving residence, offers insight into how colonial elites lived. The modest admission fee ($10) provides access to this heritage-listed home furnished with period pieces. What I appreciate about the recent curatorial approach is the inclusion of information about the Aboriginal people who worked as domestic servants and laborers in such colonial households—stories long omitted from heritage narratives.

Walking along Breakfast Creek toward its junction with the Brisbane River, I reflected on how waterways were central to both Aboriginal lifeways and colonial expansion. Rivers facilitated trade, communication, and resource access for First Nations peoples for millennia before becoming transportation corridors for European settlement.

For those interested in deepening their understanding of these complex histories, I recommend the historical guidebook which offers alternative perspectives on the city's development beyond official narratives. As an anthropologist, I've found that carrying context-rich resources enhances the experience of historical sites by illuminating the social dynamics and power relations that shaped physical spaces.