Historian Jennifer Harrison’s latest book Fettered Frontier, Founding the Moreton Bay Settlement 1822–1826, a companion volume to Shackled: Female Convicts at Moreton Bay 1826–1839 (2016) investigates the struggle to locate and establish an outpost in remote Moreton Bay. She uses original government correspondence, diaries, journals and maps and also examines the many mangled foundation stories from the time of the original site at Redcliffe and its removal to a location on the Brisbane River.
Much research has concentrated on accurately re-creating economic, climatic and legal back stories together with defining the characters who made the decisions in London, Port Jackson (Sydney) and locally as well as the convicts who undertook the heavy manual work. Happy 200th Birthday, Brisbane — you have come a long way.