Brisbane Lifestyle

Downtown Brisbane is a unique blend of the old and new. At its heart, beautifully restored sandstone buildings provide an elegant backdrop to the city's glass towers. The inner city clusters around the loops of the Brisbane River, connected to leafy, open-skied suburban communities by riverside bikeways.

Residents enjoy a wide range of landscapes and lifestyles including modern shopping centres, pedestrian malls, alternative culture clusters, up-market commercial precincts and the South Bank Parklands. With over 1000 parks and gardens and the riverside Botanic Gardens at its centre, Brisbane is an active and green city.

View Brisbane through the eyes of three international students in the Brisbane Marketing short film 'A Student's Day in Brisbane' (video, FLV, 5.27mb). Because of its subtropical climate – the temperatures average between 18-29C in summer and 9-22C in winter – Brisbane enjoys an outdoor lifestyle throughout the year with many sporting activities. These include water sports such as sailing, rowing, water-skiing, swimming, surfing and fishing.

The world-famous Gold Coast lies just to the south and the peaceful Sunshine Coast to the north, with easy access to a variety of natural attractions and scenery including beautiful Moreton Bay, rainforests and rolling rural landscapes.

View the videos below for an insight into what you can expect from living in Brisbane and discover why it's Australia's fastest growing city:

• Introduction to Brisbane (video, FLV, 16mb)
• Brisbane Lifestyle (video, FLV, 8mb)
• Transport in Brisbane (video, FLV, 8mb)
• Brisbane has food from around the globe (video, FLV, 9mb)

Visit our recreation section for information about Brisbane and Queensland’s many activities and events:

• Discover Brisbane
• Explore Queensland

Study in a world-class learning environment

Brisbane has become known as a hub for quality education. It continues to expand by significant investment in infrastructure driven by a commitment to build and maintain world-class educational facilities. From 1998 to 2008, the State government alone contributed $3.4 billion to research and development, $536 million towards health and medical research and development infrastructure, skills and commercialisation initiatives.

Brisbane fosters one of the largest e-Security research communities in the southern hemisphere and is home to some of the world’s leading firms with significant investment by Boeing, Sun Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and Mincom. And Brisbane is unquestionably the hub of games development in Australia.

Queensland’s Creative Industries are worth $3.4 billion a year and QUT’s $60 million Creative Industries precinct is of one of a kind in Australia. It is an epicentre of teaching, learning, innovating and applying all aspects of creative industries.

International students benefit from this intense research and commercialisation activity with dynamic, innovative learning environments where they are taught by individuals who are at the forefront of knowledge creation.