1823 Emancipated convicts John Finnegan, Richard Parsons, and Thomas Pamphlett were shipwrecked off Moreton Island while looking for timber (a fourth person, John Thomson, died at sea). Following a quarrel, Parsons continues north while others stay on the island.
1824 Oxley discovers Parsons and returns him to Sydney
1824 First Commandant Lt. Henry Miller arrives at Red Cliffe Pt from Sydney with soldiers, a storekeeper and their families, John Oxley, botanist Allan Cunningham, stock and seeds.
1824 the First settler born in the colony was named Amity Moreton Thompson
1825 Shipping channel via South Passage found; settlement moves to Brisbane River; first convict buildings built along William St.
1825 Edmund Lockyer of the 57th Regiment explores the Brisbane River. Notes flood debris 100 feet above river levels at Mount Crosby, finds first coal deposits.Redbank is named after the soil colour.
1826 Captain Patrick Logan takes over as commandant of the colony. Achieves an extensive stone building program using convict labour. Discovers Southport bar and Logan River.
1827 Indigenous resistance leader "Napoleon" was exiled to St. Helena Island. Aborigines raid maize plots and resist advances. there was Frequent conflict until the 1840s.
1828 Cunningham discovers gap in the Great Dividing Range, providing access from Moreton Bay to Darling Downs. Also explores Esk-Lockyer basin and upper Brisbane Valley in 1829
1829 Moreton Bay Aborigines seriously are affected by smallpox
1830 Captain Logan mysteriously murdered near Esk, commemorated in folk song, "The Convict's Lament"
1831 Moreton Bay settlement population reaches 1241, including 1066 convicts
1833 Ship Stirling Castle wrecked on Swain Reef; first of many ships to wreck on Queensland coast over next 40 years.
1836 Quaker missionaries report Moreton Bay Indigenous population infected with venereal disease from American whalers
1837 Brisbane's pioneering Petrie family arrives in Moreton Bay. Andrew Petrie (builder and stonemason) is clerk of government works; stays on with wife Mary and five children after penal settlement closes. Son John Petrie becomes Brisbane's first mayor; other son Tom writes sympathetically about local Indigenous people.
1839 Calls to cease convict transportation successful; Moreton Bay is closed as a penal settlement. 2062 men and 150 women served sentences at the settlement, half of them being Irish; 10 percent died, 700 fled, 98 never recaptured.
1840 Escaped convict John Baker surrenders after 14 years of living with Indigenous Australians
1841 Indigenous people Merridio and Neugavil are executed at Wickham Terrace windmill for the murder of surveyor Stapylton and his assistant in Logan
1842 New South Wales Governor George Gipps proclaims Moreton Bay a free settlement. Land is offered for sale from Sydney.
1846 Squatter and entrepreneur Evan Mackenzie succeeds in making Brisbane a port independent from Sydney
1846 Recorded population of Moreton Bay area is 4000 Aborigines and 2257 migrants
1848 First 240 government-assisted British migrants arrive in Brisbane. First Chinese labourers arrive.
1849 Rev Dr J.D. Lang, local clergyman and journalist, brings his first English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish migrants with unauthorised promise of land grants. Government rations issued to prevent starvation. Lang envisages a colony of self-sufficient, thrifty and hard-working farmers, workers and artisans.
1850 Displaced aborigines from Bribie Island, Redcliffe peninsula and Wide Bay make gunyah camps in Breakfast Creek/Eagle Farm region (until the 1860s)
1851 Influenza epidemic hits Brisbane (lasting in 1852)
1855 Nearly 1000 German migrants arrive in Brisbane after political unrest and the introduction of compulsory military training; most settle in the Nundah area
1855 (5 January) Aboriginal resistance leader Dundalli hanged near current Post Office; large-scale protests by Indigenous people
1939 Forgan Smith building completed at the St. Lucia campus of the University of Queensland. (Forgan Smith building was named after the, then, Premier of Queensland)
^Gregory, Helen; Dianne, Mclay (2010). Building Brisbane's History: Structure, Sculptures, Stories and Secrets. Sydney: Woodslane Press. pp. 158–160. ISBN 9781921606199.
^Evans, Raymond (2007). A History of Queensland. Port Melbourne, Victoria: Cambridge University Press. p. 85. ISBN 978-0-521-87692-6.