Brisbane History, Published 20 July 2026
Hear ye! Hear ye! Brisbane's original newsfeed has entered the chat!
Long before smartphones, radio or even the morning paper, important public announcements in early Brisbane were sometimes made the old-fashioned way... with the ring of a handbell to gather a crowd before official notices were read aloud.
In Brisbane's early years, government proclamations, public auction notices and other community announcements could all be shared this way. No Wi-Fi. No push notifications. Just a loud voice and a bell doing the heavy lifting.
Picture it: you're halfway through your day when ding ding! People stop what they're doing, wander over and wait to hear the latest "update." It was about as close as Brisbane got to a live news feed... except you couldn't mute it, scroll past it or argue with strangers in the comments.
As Brisbane grew, newspapers became more common and, later, the telegraph made it much faster to spread information. Before long, gathering people with the ring of a bell became a thing of the past.
So next time your phone buzzes with another notification, spare a thought for one of Brisbane's earliest "push notifications"... a handbell ringing in the street!
Now be honest... if someone walked down your street ringing a bell and shouting, "Hear ye! Hear ye!", would you gather around... or post about the "weird bloke with a bell" on your neighbourhood Facebook page?
A note on our visuals: To ℎelp tell tℎis story, we’ve used computer‑generated illustration produced strictly for educational, non‑commercial ℎistory sℎaring.
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