Living in Joyner: Acreage, Peace, and Proximity

26 May 2026

Living in Albany Creek: From Chinaman's Creek to the Suburb That Never Left

Before it was Albany Creek, it was Chinaman's Creek — a name given by early settlers that stuck for decades, even though no Chinese people ever lived there. When locals finally petitioned for a change in 1885, they picked Albany Creek for 'sentimental reasons.' That sentimental streak has defined the suburb ever since. Seventeen kilometres north of the CBD, Albany Creek is the suburb where the population barely moved in a decade because nobody wants to leave. The story of how it got there — from James Cash's 1849 hut to the South Pine River crossings to the 1960s boom — is the story of Brisbane's northern growth, told in one suburb.

26 May 2026

Living in Bridgeman Downs: The Irish Bank Manager's Acreage That Became a Suburb

Fifteen kilometres north of the CBD, Bridgeman Downs is named after Henry St John Bridgeman, an Irish bank manager who bought a large tract of land here in 1860 but never actually lived on it. Pig farms and pine trees for 120 years — then the late 1980s brought developers, and the paddocks became palaces. Today it has the highest owner-occupier rate in the northern corridor at 68%, 24 parks, the iconic Two Brothers mansions on Beams Road that every local knows, incomes in the top 20% of Queensland, and a median price of $1.18M. The Irishman who never set foot on his own land wouldn't recognise it — but his name is on the map forever.

26 May 2026

Living in Sandgate: Brisbane's Original Seaside Escape

Long before the Gold Coast was a strip of high-rises, before the Sunshine Coast was a weekend destination, there was Sandgate. A pier. A foreshore. A train line that carried Brisbanites to the bay for a day of swimming, fish and chips, and salt air. The Sandgate Town Hall, built in 1913, still stands on Rainbow Street. Bathers at Moora Park — captured in a 1937 State Archives photo — look remarkably like the families who picnic there today. Eighteen kilometres north of the CBD, Sandgate has been doing the same thing for 170 years, and it's never gone out of style.