Queen Street Mall sits at the heart of Brisbane, stretching 500 metres through the city centre as one of Australia's busiest pedestrian precincts. Two hundred years ago, this was a dusty dirt track where convicts in leg irons shuffled past supply carts. The transformation into a pedestrian mall came in 1982. Though the street's commercial ambitions had long been signalled by the Brisbane Arcade. It opened in 1923 and still anchors one end with its jewellery boutiques and ornate facade.

The mall is also where Brisbane's story begins. VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use the Visitor Information Centre here as their starting point. They trace the city's arc from a remote penal settlement, founded in 1825 and named after the governor who ordered its creation, to the river city it became.