Brisbane is the world’s third largest single municipality after Los Angeles and New York and Australia’s fastest growing capital city. Famous for its balmy weather and alfresco lifestyle, it offers the very best in food and wine, arts and entertainment and major sporting events. Brisbane was considered a big country town until it reinvented itself as the cosmopolitan host for the 1986 Commonwealth Games and 1988 World Expo. Originally the home of the Jagera and Turrbal Aboriginal tribes, Brisbane’s European history dates back to 1823 when John Oxley first explored the area. Like other eastern seaboard cities, Brisbane started out as a penal colony until free settlers pushed for the end of the convict settlement and the opening up if the area in 1837.