Our Brisbane History

Maritime Heart

City Wharves

With the Port of Brisbane out of sight at Fisherman's Island near the mouth of the river, it is difficult to imagine that the city reaches of the river once bustled with maritime activity and that both the northern and southern banks of the river were lined with wharves.

In the very early days of the colony, ships moored downstream as far as Cleveland. Goods were unloaded into lighters to be brought upstream. However, by 1880 the river had been dredged sufficiently to allow ships of up to 1200 tons with a draught of 21 feet to sail upstream to the town wharves.

By 1913, wharves extended on the southern side of the river from the Kangaroo Point cliffs to the Victoria Bridge. On the northern side they extended from Victoria Bridge to Petrie Bight with the exclusion of Gardens Point. Photographs of the period show how integrated the commercial and maritime activities of the city were.

From 1913 on, the increasing level of shipping traffic could no longer be handled by the city wharves and companies such as Dalgety built wharves in the Bulimba and Hamilton reaches. From this time on, maritime activity gradually disappeared from the central city area.