Brisbane has changed a lot in 18 years, and we’ve changed with it

Brisbane Times turns 18 this week, but the city grew up a long time ago.

When this website first fired up on March 7, 2007 – just two months after the first iPhone was released – it was a digital-only offering at a time when most readers still expected to read their news in a printed newspaper.

Brisbane Times – then owned by Fairfax Media and now under the Nine umbrella – was launched by premier Peter Beattie, and we’ve had five other premiers and three Brisbane lord mayors since then.

The Brisbane Times homepage on March 10, 2007.Credit: Wayback Machine

For many years, Australia’s third-most populous city had a chip on its shoulder about being overlooked for Sydney and Melbourne. And let’s not even get started on that whole “big country town” question, which quite frankly was irrelevant even before we won the 2032 Olympics.

With more than 2.8 million people expected to live here by next year, and Queensland continuing to take on more interstate migrants than any other jurisdiction, it’s fair to say Brisbane has changed not just in its new buildings, bridges and roads, but through the people who now call it home.

I was one of the newcomers, having moved from regional NSW in 2004 for university, and I no longer feel like an outsider among Queenslanders (even though I’ll never really appreciate that “which school did you go to?” question that still pops up here).

But, on a physical level, just looking at the city in 2007 versus today, you can see how much it’s morphed.

Gone is the state government’s Executive Building on George Street, replaced with 1 William Street in 2016.

We’ve got Howard Smith Wharves, Queen’s Wharf and its new casino, and new bridges everywhere you look, most of them just for walking and riding, but two for cars with tolls – Kurilpa (2009), Go Between (2010), the second Gateway Bridge (2010), Breakfast Creek (2024), Kangaroo Point (2024) and Neville Bonner (2024).

As Brisbane’s population has grown, so too has the pressure on housing and traffic congestion, and families in the outer suburbs are driven to own three or more cars to fill gaps in infrastructure and public transport.

The Kurilpa Bridge under construction in 2009.Credit: Adobe Stock

There’s been new toll road tunnels, Clem Jones, which opened in 2010 and Legacy Way in 2015, while hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on road projects, like Kingsford Smith Drive and at the Moggill Road roundabout at Indooroopilly, and a second runway opened at the Brisbane Airport, prompting noise complaints.

Cross River Rail, first proposed in 2010 before being scrapped by the LNP for the BaT Tunnel and put back on the table under Labor in 2015, is expected to start running in 2029, while public transport fares are now even cheaper than they were 18 years ago.

Brisbane’s “ugliest building”, the Brisbane Transit Centre on Roma Street, was torn down for a new underground rail station and Myer left the Myer Centre, which is now Uptown.

Victoria Park’s golf course was permanently closed to create Brisbane’s biggest public park, and the site has become central to the debate about whether stadiums should be upgraded or built for the Olympic Games.

Urban renewal, thought of as unwanted gentrification by some and welcomed by others, has come to suburbs like West End with West Village, and Gasworks Newstead opened in 2013.

The state’s political fabric, once known for conservatism under the Bjelke-Petersen years and as the birthplace of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, has changed over time, with Greens MPs elected to state and federal parliament, and council.

There’s been major law changes, like abortion, voluntary assisted dying, and historical gay convictions were expunged.

ID scanning rules in the Valley and the Brisbane CBD came into effect in 2017 as the state grappled with a way to prevent alcohol-fuelled violence following the one-punch death of 18-year-old Cole Miller.

There’s been devastating and deadly floods, in 2011 and 2022.

And in 2020, the city joined the world in battling COVID-19 with masks, lockdowns and strict border policies that even separated families.

Back in 2007, BT was launched with a staff of 15 journalists, and the final remaining OG, Tony Moore, left our office late last year.

We now have more staff than when we started out, a vastly improved website and a far-reaching social media presence. We relaunched in 2023 to better reflect the city that Brisbane has become, and will continue to evolve with it.

Happy birthday, Brisbane Times.

I’d buy you a beer, but young people drink less these days, so I guess it’ll be a matcha instead.