The Brisbane River winds its way through the suburbs and city on little cat feet, where it sits, waiting on silent haunches and then moves on. My apologies to the poet Carl Sandberg and to his wonderful, short, lyrical poem Fog. But that’s the image that stuck with me as I renewed an acquaintance with this wonderful waterway after an absence of more than 40 years.
   Yet the Brisbane River is not always a tranquil stream. Almost everyone in Brisbane remembers the 1974 flood when this quiet pussycat roared, smashed and scoured its way to Moreton Bay.
   And there was a flicker of that character the week before I took my wonderful trip on the CityCat. Rain had pelted down, the river began to rise, Doomben’s start to the Winter Carnival meant racing was on a heavy track and debris started to appear in the river. All river ferries, the cross-river plumpers, the sleek CityCats and the sedate, matronly cruise boats, stopped running. I took my magical, mystical tour on my last day in town, only a day or so after operations re-commenced.
   Thankfully, my family and I missed the 1974 flood as the home in which we had lived at St Lucia was completely inundated. Some years later when I went to visit the area, I found that the house had been replaced with an apartment block. So apartments may have stuck in my brain as a conditioned reflex to the change that to me has epitomised the revolution that has overtaken the river – the building of and the living in riverside apartments.
   But perhaps the most striking change has been to the CBD. When I worked in the City, there were no tower buildings. The City Hall was strong and prominent. Lennons was regarded as being a tall building. The Treasury Building was where I would visit officers from the Education Department (perhaps they still dispense education but methinks it’s of a very different kind).
   There was a wonderful old pub – the Bellevue – opposite Parliament House. It was where I had my first experience of Brisbane accommodation.
   To a young man from Sydney, Brisbane seemed, at that time, to be like a large country town. When ladies came into town for the day they still wore twin sets and pearls, gloves and a hat. The first question I was asked was “Where did you go to school?”
   The expected answer was to nominate one of the private schools that provided most of the secondary education in Queensland after WWII. When I told them I went to a public or State school in New South Wales, they were more than surprised. Eventually I used the tactic of informing any inquirer that: “I went to Plunkett Street School”, a reference to a little school in Woolloomooloo that I had never seen let alone ever visited. Most did not pursue that response.
   The area of Moreton Bay, considered by some to be an extension of the Brisbane River, was first noted by Joseph Banks as he sailed past Cape Moreton in the Endeavour in May 1770. He described the water in the bay as: “…a dirty clay colour, appearing as if charged with freshes”. He conjectured that a major river flowed into the bay.
   However, it was Matthew Flinders who, in 1799, explored Moreton Bay in some detail but failed to locate the river. Shoals on the western shore and dense mangrove forests obscured the entrance.
   John Oxley, noting the stories of escaped convicts who stumbled onto the river after being shipwrecked on Moreton Island in 1823, decided to investigate and consequently was one of the first Europeans to enter the river. Oxley navigated his whaleboat upstream as far as Goodna and named the river after the Governor of New South Wales, Governor Thomas Brisbane (Queensland did not become a sovereign State until 1859). After Oxley’s report to the Governor, it was decided to found a settlement in the area.
   The advance party, led by Lt Henry Miller set up camp at Redcliffe. Oxley made further sorties into the Brisbane River and in May 1825, the settlement was moved from Redcliffe to the river – to Brisbane Town. Once the township was settled, others explored the basin and its waterways.
   The Brisbane River Basin is about 200km long and 100km wide. Explorers found that many of the waterways were very navigable. John Gray, Edmund Lockyer, Patrick Logan and Allan Cunningham all participated in exploring the rivers, creeks and surrounding land. Names of towns, rivers and creeks commemorate their efforts.
   The settlement on the banks of the Brisbane River was probably chosen by Lt Henry Miller and the first buildings were constructed near what is now North Quay. Although it was a considerable distance from the sea, it was carefully sited for both its defensive possibilities, its elevation above what might have been considered a probable high-flood level and fresh water was available from a creek that ran from Roma Street to Creek Street.
   Brisbane was established as a convict settlement for recidivists previously accommodated at Port Macquarie but not evil enough to go to Norfolk Island. Port Macquarie was to be given over to free settlement. The convict settlement was known as Moreton Bay and is commemorated in that soulful folksong ‘Moreton Bay’.
   Here we learn of another side of Patrick Logan. ‘I’ve been a convict at Port Macquarie/At Norfolk Island and Emu Plains/At Castle Hill and at cursed Toongabbie/At all these settlements I’ve worked in chains/But of all the places of condemnation/And penal stations of New South Wales/ To Moreton Bay I have found no equal/Excessive tyranny each day prevails.’
   The song goes on to state: ‘And Captain Logan he had us mangled/At the triangles of Moreton Bay.’ The song commemorates, with exhilaration, Logan’s death at the hands of the Aborigines.
   Brisbane was a frontier town in the 1840s and its importance rode on the sheep’s back. As early as 1842, there were moves to make Cleveland, located on Moreton Bay, the main port of Brisbane. These were dismissed even though the Brisbane River provided some real navigational problems.
   There was always the Brisbane bar where the first channel, cut in 1866 and known as the Francis Channel, was created by dredging the mud, sand and shells deposited there over aeons of time. Originally there was only about two metres of water over the bar at low tide.
   There was a bar further up the river. This was made up of dolomite rock that crossed the river at Lytton. In 1896, this section was deepened by blasting. Then there were the ‘Flats’ near Hamilton that could only be navigated at high tide. Rock seawalls and dredging were employed to make this reach navigable.
   Ocean going sailing ships, when they did make it up the river, loaded wool at South Brisbane even before any wharves were constructed there. When wharves were built, they extended along the south bank. More wharves were built along the Town Reach to the Customs House and then progressively downstream as far as Breakfast Creek.
   The next phase saw docks built at Hamilton and Pikemba but this was only from around 1937. Today, apart from the ferries and some remaining docks at Hamilton and Pinkemba, the wharves have gone east beyond what was once the Brisbane bar. (There will be a future article on the new and expanding Port of Brisbane.)
   So what of my river tour? It started at New Farm and headed east. Our most easterly point was the Apollo Road Wharf from where it was possible to see the Hamilton wharves and the Cairncross Dock and repair facility.
   The ferry was efficient, slick and fast. We sped past New Farm, Bulimba, Kangaroo Point, the Storey Bridge through the Town Reach and into the South Brisbane Reach flanked by the City on one hand and South Bank on the other.
   Under more bridges, and still more being constructed, and into the Milton and Toowong Reaches. At Toowong, I was pleased to see that one of my old watering-holes, the famous Regatta Hotel, was there in all its pure Queensland glory.
   Off on the St Lucia Reach and I noted where I used to catch the cross-river ferry from St Lucia (that now appears to be called Guyatt Park) to West End. It was at the West End wharf that I caught the biggest catfish I had ever encountered – in fact it was the only fish I ever caught in the Brisbane River. After docking at the wharf adjacent to the University of Queensland, we started back on the return journey.
   What was most striking about the whole experience were the towers of the CBD, the number of bridges and the number under construction, the number of foot/bicycle bridges, the growth of riverside apartments, the re-invented South Bank and the general air of excitement that is now Brisbane.
   My sentimental journey was a wake-up call.