Once Brisbane was declared open for free settlement, steps were taken to avoid replicating the high-density slums of Sydney and Melbourne.

Rather than increasing the density of housing within the city centre, Brisbane began to sprawl outwards and create suburbs, helped by the strong public transport system. Legislation was passed that allowed the 20 local authority areas to be consolidated into one metropolitan city in 1924, and today Brisbane City Council encompasses 190 suburbs.

The identities of many Brisbane suburbs have been shaped by the migrant communities who have populated them. For example, Fortitude Valley was named after the ship The Fortitude, which brought the first major shipment of free settlers to Brisbane from Britain in 1849, most of  whom settled in the suburb. German missionaries were granted entry to Brisbane in 1838 before it was opened for free settlement, and settled in Nundah. Greek and Italian communities have been long-established in suburbs such as West End and New Farm. Darra, Richlands and Sunnybank are home to thriving and diverse East Asian communities.

Many Brisbane suburb names were taken from local Aboriginal words, often with sounds and meanings lost in translation.

For example, the suburb Yeronga, which features in Megan Cope’s Floodlands (2013), translates to ‘gravelly place’. Base camps at waterholes were often the earliest settlement at any given Brisbane suburb, with settlers moving close by because they too required supplies of fresh water. In a number of cases, parks near the heart of suburbs are relics of former Aboriginal camping grounds.

The identities of our suburbs continue to evolve with the arrival of new communities. Moorooka has become a centre for African and central Asian refugees and migrants over the past decade, amplifying the vibrant energy that Margaret Cilento captured in her painting Sunday in Moorooka in 1952.

Paintings such as Richard Randall’s Near Yeronga (1906) reveal that suburbs we now consider densely populated were vast grazing lands not long ago. Other suburbs no longer exist, such as Cribb Island and Jackson’s Estate, which became part of Brisbane Airport. Other suburbs, including West End and Spring Hill, still bear the marks of racial division in the form of Boundary streets. These streets delineated the areas where Aboriginal people were policed to not enter after evening curfew.