Indian businesses and services in Brisbane, Australia

Unlike Sydney or Melbourne, Brisbane does not have one area that everyone thinks of as its Indian neighbourhood. The community has grown through students, skilled migrants and families, and it is spread across the southern and western suburbs and into Logan, with others toward Ipswich and the Moreton Bay region. Indian grocery stores and restaurants follow the same pattern, scattered through suburban shopping centres rather than gathered on one street.

A few temples serve as community anchors. The Shree Laxmi Narayan Mandir at Burbank, in the south-eastern suburbs, is run by an association whose roots go back to 1979, and the Sri Selva Vinayakar Koyil at South Maclean, south of the city, serves the Tamil community in a semi-rural setting. There are gurdwaras, Swaminarayan mandirs and mosques with South Asian congregations elsewhere in the metro, and the Gold Coast to the south has its own temples and associations.

Diwali is celebrated with community festivals and temple events in October or November, and Holi, Vaisakhi, Onam and Navratri are observed by their communities. Brisbane is a city where a car makes life easier, especially for reaching temples on the outskirts. One practical difference from the southern capitals: Queensland does not use daylight saving time, so the time difference to India stays at four and a half hours all year.