George Wishart worked as a professional photographer and was taught painting by Isaac Walter Jenner, Brisbane’s foremost marine painter. He mainly painted scenes of Moreton Bay and the Brisbane River. When this work was first exhibited at the Queensland International Exhibition in 1897, it was highly praised as 'decidedly one of the attractions of the gallery'. It records the commercial activity at the Eagle Street Wharves, now part of Brisbane’s CBD. Towards the background, Wishart has captured the Bunya pines in the old botanic reserve (later to become the City Botanic Gardens) established in 1828 to provide food for the early penal colony. Further back, the light strikes the cliffs at Kangaroo Point.