Pinkenba, Queensland
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Pinkenba is the name of a suburb in eastern Brisbane on the northern side of the Brisbane River. Despite being less than 10 kilometres from the Brisbane central business district, it has a largely rural feel to it. The area is spacially isolated from other residential suburbs and is surrounded by the Brisbane Airport to the north and west, and industrial land and the bank of the Brisbane River to the south. The suburb is accessed along Kingsford Smith Drive which passes an industrial area before reaching the suburb. Numerous development projects have been proposed for the area, including residential developments and an immigration detention centre, but nothing has ever come of it. Apart from BP's Bulwer Island Refinery, the area remains largely undeveloped.
The suburb consists of a small number of detached houses (primarily of weatherboard construction), a primary school and a local store. Pinkenba is also the site of the now-abandoned Pinkenba railway station.
In recent years, the Pinkenba stretches of road (including Lomandra Drive, joining the main Pinkenba arterial to the East-West airport road) have become popular haunts for street racers and motorcyclists, with Lomandra Drive being a particularly popular stretch of road for motorcyclists to test the limits of their bikes, with some racers reaching 300km/h on the main stretch. Given the limited exit routes, racing and "hooning" in this area could only be regarded as extremely foolish, as a police lockdown of the entire area is, at most, a 6-car task.