Talk:Brisbane River

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River's Aboriginal names The article nominates 'Meanjin' or 'Meeannjin' as the most likely Aboriginal name for the river, based on only a single non-Indigenous source from the colonial era, written at a time when non-Indigenous journalists frequently got things like this wrong. But the weight of available evidence (see e.g. the work of historian Ray Kerkhove) suggests that Meanjin was/is actually the name for a specific location along the river near the Brisbane CBD, and that Maiwar is a more correct name for the river itself. This part of the article should be edited and updated. In conversations with both Turrbal and Jagera elders, the consensus seems to be that the river's name is Maiwar, not Meanjin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kulpurum (talk • contribs) 21:39, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

Misc

The article's a good starting point. However, there's a lot more that can be added: history (1974 Floods), the drainage area, the big dams (Somerset and Wivenhoe), and the wildlife. Maybe a little bit about land use. - Peter Murphy

• Also worth mentioning the sea port, old wharves in the city and at Newstead. current transport (ferries, citycat) and recreational (rowing, tour and restaurnat boats) uses. In land uses it is also worth mentioning suburbs, significant buildings and institutions along the river: Qniversity of Qld, the CBD, QUT, Botanic Gardens, riverside expressway, customs house, kangaroo point cliffs, powerhouse arts centre, regatta hotel, the dairy factory, Queensland State Gallery, Museum, Southbank.

I hope to find the time write it up soon, but if somebody beats me to it that's fine. Adz 13:53, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Don't forget the old wharves where Southbank is now. They were there until the 1960s. Also the coal wharves on the south side where the Capt Cook Bridge is now. They went about the same time 136.153.2.2 09:26, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the environmental section is poorly written, subjective, and may fail to achieve a neutral point of view. For example:

"Historically, the river was actively dredged by Boral Sands Inc, ostensibly to make the river navigable. The constant extraction of river bed material by dredges has had considerable effect on the river. These impacts include increased turbidity, bed and bank erosion and changes in tidal hydraulics. The tidal nature of the river and the generally muddy nature of the sands removed by dredging created a woefully sludgy clayey sediment load in the river which did not clear."

Not only is this very subjective, there is no reference for any of this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wochee (talk • contribs) 15:49, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

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Are the unnamed railway bridge and the Albert Bridge, Brisbane actually the same bridge? - Shiftchange 02:22, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

No, they are two separate bridges, the second rail bridge was built when the line was quadruplicated in the 1950s. The Albert Bridge dates from 1890s 136.153.2.2 09:26, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

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Perhaps this article has far too many pictures, it seems quite cluttered. Aggelophoros 07:04, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I just made the images a little bit smaller and that seems to fix the cluttered problem. Perhaps we could have a gallery for the bridge pictures just after the bridges sections. A little like this:

• 
  Gateway Bridge towards the mouth of the river {
• 
  Story Bridge as seen from the Eagle Street Pier
• 
  Goodwill Bridge and CityCat catamaran ferries

I'm not completely sure about this idea though. Aggelophoros 07:22, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

To make the article look better, after your resizing of the photos, I reverted to the previous edit to bring back all the photos to their previous size, then resized the two photos of Brisbane River, so that they would be of an identical size again. I removed the other photos because they are not only of the river. Figaro 06:43, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

The article looks much better now. Good job! Aggelophoros 09:40, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure why most of the photos were removed from this article. It looked better before, I don't think it looked cluttered. Maybe some of the images that were removed could go back on the left side. - Shiftchange 10:16, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I have returned the photo of the river which I removed, and positioned the photo, plus the second of the photos which remained, into new positions on the page.

I have also created a new page for the Brisbane bridges, called Bridges of Brisbane, where photos of all the bridges mentioned are now displayed in their own photo gallery section of the page. Figaro 04:16, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Really well done, thanks for the attention, the new bridges page looks great. - Shiftchange 17:17, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

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Grretings felow Brisvegans! Added a section on KP and added a bit of knowledge re: the floods, and the environment.Rolinator 14:41, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I have put most (but not all) of the information onto the Kangaroo Point Cliffs page. I have left the information which is specifically about the Kangaroo Point Cliffs' significance to the Brisbane River. Figaro 06:37, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

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The quarrying operation ceased (when? anyone?) and the area was converted to a park (when?).

I have provided details about when quarrying started, next visit to the State Library I will try to find out when it finished also the Brisbane City Council Archives at Wandoo st in the Valley are worth checking for more info --Matt 03:46, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Brisbane River category

Should there be a category for the Brisbane River - to include bridges, dams, suburbs, boats etc on/next to the river? --RobBrisbane 02:45, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Long response time I know, still I would say the category is not required. The see also section on Brisbane River isn't overflowing, major tributaries and bridge articles are expanding, and we have Talk:Brisbane_River/to_do, to help organise things. There is little overlap and a new category is probably unneeded. - Shiftchange (talk) 23:20, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Map added

I added a map I created, so I will proceed to remove the map request.

MagpieShooter 04:41, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism

Could this page please be protected against the repeated vandalism against it. Thanks. Figaro 23:04, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Oxley's hand drawn map

I notice there is a map drawn up by John Oxley himself that is not included with this article. I believe it would be a worthy addition, but I don't know how to load the picture or even whether copyright will allow it.

If anyone with more experience would be willing to check it out it can be viewed on the following link: http://enc.slq.qld.gov.au/logicrouter/servlet/LogicRouter?PAGE=object&OUTPUTXSL=object_enc36ui.xslt&pm_RC=PICTQLD&pm_OI=34806&api_1=GET_OBJECT_XML&num_result=0

Thanks...looking forward to further improvement on this page! --GaryB84 (talk) 03:53, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Riverfire merge

• Support: I would support a merge because the event is centered on the river and because it is not happening any more. I could be convinced otherwise by a strong argument. - Shiftchange (talk) 02:17, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

-Support. Riverfire in and of itself is not a major festival, only exists because of the river plus it's only a short article whic would enhance the Brisbane River page HonkyTonkHarlot (talk) 06:58, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

• Look, if you merge Riverfire I'm fine. However I don't think Brisbane Festival should be merged since it is NOT a festival only taking place on the river.--Jsjsjs1111 (talk) 04:06, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

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Mount Ommaney Reach

Ref given is wrong. Cannot find any other ref. Anyone able to clear this up? Downsize43 (talk) 23:01, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

It's genuine (see [2]) It seems a lot more named reaches have been added to the river from when I last checked so I am busy seeing what else may be missing. Kerry (talk) 23:04, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

OK I've fixed that ref problem and I've added in a number of additional reaches. But I have just found a few more. Kerry (talk) 02:36, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Aboriginal name for the river

The 1901 source quoted in the article did not say the Aboriginal people called the river Meeanjin, but rather that they had no name for the river as a whole but did name invididual reaches and bends. As it was very poorly cited, I presume nobody checked what it said. I have added more complete citations so people can read it for themselves. Now there well may be other reliable sources that confirm there was an Aboriginal name for the river as a whole, but right now, it's not Meeanjin and the claim that it is Maiwar is unsourced. Can we find some reliable sources? Kerry (talk) 08:16, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

There seems to be a trend in relation to matters Aboriginal to suspend the usual standards of science and rigour that apply to everything else, with a special exception to be made for matters Aboriginal. If the whole river was not given a name in the relevant Aboriginal language, it is improper to try and claim one on the article in some political signalling exercise. As Kerry Raymond has pointed out, if specific segments are named, it is appropriate to refer to that in the Etymology section.StormcrowMithrandir 10:00, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Well, it's more complicated than that. There are lots of people in contemporary media providing Indigenous names for things in sources we often regard as reliable (newspapers, etc). But contemporary media is an echo chamber. Google searches throw up Wikipedia articles with Indigenous names (uncited or dubiously cited as in the case here) or one of the myriad of mirror sites of Wikipedia, a journo says the river was called Whatever by the Aboriginal people in one publication, others happily copy that or cite it from those sources. But if these folks don't provide any provenance for the name (the evidence trail from the original Aboriginal people to the document being cited), then it's pretty much anyone's guess whether it is true or not. In 1923 Meston says that Tom Petrie reported to a Parliamentary committee in 1861 that only 5 of the Brisbane tribe remained and that 20 years earlier there was around 200 of them [3]. If that's true, it would seem that Petrie's documentation based on his interactions with Aboriginal people in that earlier period may well be the only written record we have of their language and names. And certainly any claim for an "original Aboriginal" name must show how it has been passed on from that early period. It may well be that Maiwar (or other name) might be Aboriginal in origin but from another tribe. Certainly Meston reports in some detail of the many tribes and the varying degress of similarity of their language. This then begs the question of will any Aboriginal name for a place suffice for Wikipedia's purposes or should it be the name in the language of those who lived in that area (a language which may well now be extinct)? I think in many cases the best thing we can do is to include a list of candidate Indigenous names claimed (with whatever information including citations are available) as a section of the article and discuss it there but only put in the opening sentence and/or the infobox, a name which has strong provenance. I think that is the best WP:NPOV way to deal with it. Just provide the candidate names and the evidence for them and let the reader make their own interpretation of it, rather than for us as contributors to "decide for them" by presenting only one name or presenting it without making clear what alternatives or uncertainties are present. Kerry (talk) 04:21, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Riverfestival

Riverfestival redirects to Brisbane River#Events, but neither "Riverfestival" nor "River festival" are mentioned in anywhere in Brisbane River (or Brisbane, or List of festivals in Brisbane). Could someone with local knowledge fix this anomaly please. Mitch Ames (talk) 02:55, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

I think this is some kind of shorthand for the annual Brisbane Festival which includes Riverfire. I vaguely recollect that the one of the early Brisbane Festivals was a celebration of the river, so Riverfestival might have been used for that particular event, but I cannot find a source, so I think it's easiest to replace uses of Riverfestival with Brisbane Festival and/or Riverfire as seems appropriate and seek to then delete the Riverfestival redirect. I'm doing the replacement now. Kerry (talk) 02:36, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Riverfire merge revert?

Reviewing the article/talk page I can see that the Riverfire article was merged with this page approx. 14 years ago. I believe this should be reverted as Riverfire now has a large/significant enough history for it's own article.

Alternatively as it is also an event within the Brisbane Festival the article for the Brisbane Festival could be expanded upon to include Riverfire in a more significant capacity. BA Buggs (talk) 03:56, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with you. Looking at the Riverfire article history, it's clear that, while the creator in 2006 did provide some external links, they did not provide any citations as such. I think in the intervening 18 years, there should be sufficient reliable sources mentioning it to be cited. I created a subheading for Riverfire in this article. Can I suggest you first build it up with information and citations and then shift to to its own article with links from this article? If you need help in doing the shifting, let me know and I will help. Kerry (talk) 04:57, 30 August 2024 (UTC)