Brisbaneਬ੍ਰਿਸਬੇਨ

Brisbane is the capital of Queensland and Australia's third most populous city, built on the bends of the Brisbane River near Moreton Bay, with 2,526,239 people in Greater Brisbane in the 2021 census. Its Punjabi community is Queensland's centre and one of the fastest growing in Australia: the census counted 22,507 people using Punjabi at home in Greater Brisbane, making Punjabi the city's third most used language other than English, ahead of Cantonese and Spanish.

Where is Brisbane, and why do Punjabis live there?

Brisbane stands on the Brisbane River, on the traditional lands of the Yuggera and Turrbal peoples, about 15 kilometres inland from Moreton Bay in southeast Queensland. It began as a penal settlement, founded in 1824 at Redcliffe and moved the next year to the river site of the present city centre, and it took its name from Sir Thomas Brisbane, a governor of New South Wales. Brisbane became a city in 1902 and a single greater city in 1925. The Story Bridge, the steel cantilever bridge opened in 1940 and now heritage listed, carries the city's best known view: the towers of the centre across the wide brown river.

Punjabis live in Brisbane because southeast Queensland is where new Australian life is being built: cheaper houses than Sydney or Melbourne, new estates in the Logan corridor between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, and work in construction, transport, health and services. Queensland's Punjabi numbers were small for most of the 20th century, but skilled migration, students and families moving up from the southern capitals have grown the community quickly since 2000. Brisbane follows Melbourne and Sydney in this series' map of Punjabi places in Australia.

What do the numbers say?

Greater Brisbane counted 2,526,239 people in the 2021 census, with a median age of 36. Punjabi was used at home by 22,507 of them, 0.9 per cent, the third most used language other than English after Mandarin and Vietnamese, and ahead of Cantonese at 21,694 and Spanish at 19,467: a remarkable rank for a community that barely registered a generation ago. Across Queensland, 30,873 people used Punjabi at home, 0.6 per cent of the state, and Greater Brisbane holds most of them. India was among Greater Brisbane's largest countries of birth, with 51,650 residents, 2.0 per cent of the city, born in India.

For religion, the census tables opened for this entry publish Greater Brisbane's largest affiliations only, and Sikhism does not appear among them, so no citywide Sikh total is invented here. Across Queensland, census based tables counted 27,713 Sikhs in 2021, 0.54 per cent of the state, most of them in the southeast. The suburb belt tells the story instead: in Eight Mile Plains, the suburb built around the temple on Logan Road, Punjabi was used at home by 4.5 per cent of residents in 2021, and 6.7 per cent of the suburb was born in India, the clearest single measure of where Brisbane's Punjabi families are settling, in the corridor running south from Eight Mile Plains towards Logan and the Gold Coast.

Eight Mile Plains, Logan and the southern corridor

Punjabi Brisbane runs south. The anchor suburb is Eight Mile Plains, on Logan Road near the Gateway Motorway, where the Brisbane Sikh Temple stands and where Punjabi families settled around the temple, the shops and the transport links of the southern suburbs. From there the community spreads south along the Logan Road and motorway corridor, through the City of Logan and into the new estates further south, where Punjabi grocers, restaurants, takeaways and trucking and building businesses serve a young, growing population. A smaller Punjabi presence of students and professionals lives across the inner city and the northern suburbs, but the southern corridor is the community's heartland.

The Brisbane Sikh Temple and community life

The Brisbane Sikh Temple, at 2679 Logan Road in Eight Mile Plains, is the first gurdwara in South East Queensland. The sangat has lived in Brisbane for well over fifty years: regular congregations began in 1981 at the Camp Hill School of Arts and moved to a rented hall in Woolloongabba in 1982, Brisbane Sikh Temple Inc was established in 1987 as the first Sikh institution in South East Queensland, land was bought on Logan Road in 1988, and the sangat moved into the completed gurdwara that December. Today it opens seven days a week, with nitnem at 6 in the morning, Rehras Sahib in the evening and a Sunday diwan, serving as Queensland's best known Sikh address and the first stop for new arrivals in the south of the city. Around the temple sit the institutions of a young community: Punjabi language teaching for children, sports and cultural events, and the family networks that help new migrants find work, housing and schools in a new state.

Brisbane is the river city of the Australian subtropics, and its Punjabi community is the newest of the big city communities in this series: third language of the city in the census, a temple on Logan Road, and a growth corridor pointing south. For the full map, see Punjabi places in Australia.