Ipswich is an urban centre in South-East Queensland, Australia. Along the Bremer River Valley, it is approximately 40 km west of the Brisbane CBD. The locality of the same name forms its Central Activities District, business and administrative centre. Ipswich is the administrative centre of the City of Ipswich both of which share an estimated population of 180,000.
Once a large city of its own, today it has become subsumed into the Brisbane metropolitan area due to urban sprawl and is a part of Brisbane for statistical purposes. It is a major commercial and industrial area that is currently undergoing major transit oriented urban renewal, which was first planned in the Ipswich Regional Centre Strategy.
It began as a mining settlement and was proclaimed as a municipality on 2 March 1860, and became a city in 1904.
Ipswich is home to the Safe City camera network installed into nine suburbs to date with further expansions proposed in the coming years. 180 cameras are monitored 24/7 from a facility situated within the CBD. The Ipswich City Council Safe City Monitoring Facility has hosted representatives of law enforcement agencies from the Netherlands, Taiwan, Great Britain and approximately twenty-five local authorities from across Australia to inspect the camera monitoring system.
Plans are underway for Ipswich to contain the largest gas-fired power station in Australia and two new gas-fired power stations.
History
Prior to the arrival of European settlers, what is now called Ipswich was home to many indigenous language groups, including the Warpai tribe, Yuggera and Ugarapul Indigenous Australian groups. The area was first explored by European colonists in 1826, when Captain Patrick Logan, Commandant of the Moreton Bay penal colony, sailed up the Brisbane River and discovered large deposits of limestone and other minerals.
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