Why are Brisbane CBD streets running north-east named after women and the opposite after men?

Updated

If you've lived in Brisbane for a while, you'd have noticed a pattern when it comes to how the CBD's streets are named.

Streets facing north-east have female names, each named after a royal. In the opposite direction, the names are male and also of royal descent.

Thanks to your votes, Curious Brisbane was tasked to find out why the names were picked.

The answer lies back in 1842, a time when Brisbane was still part of New South Wales (just let that sink in).

Historian Thom Blake said it was considered "one of the remotest parts of the British empire", and was not thought of as a potential capital.

"There was great debates about whether it was Brisbane or Cleveland or Ipswich that might become the capital," he said, adding that South Brisbane and Kangaroo Point were also in the mix.

He said it was a matter of convenience for the British settlers to name Brisbane's streets after kings and queens of England.

"You don't know what the native bird names are. You don't know any Aboriginal names, that's for certain," Mr Blake said.

There are a couple of exceptions - there has never been a King Albert or a Queen Alice.

Mr Blake said Albert Street was named after Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, and Alice Street was named after their daughter Princess Alice.

Other CBD streets are self-explanatory.

"Creek Street, that used to be a creek. Wharf Street - that was the street down to the wharf," Mr Blake said.

As the city began to take shape, plans were drawn up to widen the streets from 20 to 28 metres, but NSW Governor George Gipps rejected the proposal.

The only exception was Queen Street, which was pushed out to 24 metres.

"He didn't think anything would come of Brisbane," he said.

How wrong he was. The Greater Brisbane region now boasts a population of more than 2.2 million people, and the city is the third largest in the country.

Topics: history, community-and-society, urban-development-and-planning, human-interest, brisbane-4000, qld

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