bananafarming

The tropical banana-growing regions of northern Queensland, mainly around Tully and Innisfail, produce more than 90% of Australia’s bananas Banana plants first arrived in Australia in the 1800s. The original bananas from south-east Asia were small, about as long as an adult’s finger. This led to Arabian traders giving them their name, based on the Arabic word for finger, “banan”. True story! We have the Chinese migrant communities to thank for introducing bananas to Australia way back in the mid 1800s. The lucky citizens of Carnarvon in Western Australia were first to taste bananas before the good folk of north Queensland were fortunate enough to experience its delights. It wasn’t until the 1880s, however, that Chinese workers from the goldfields established banana plantations in the Queensland tropics around Cooktown, Port Douglas, Cairns, Innisfail and Tully. In the 1890s, plantations were started in the Coffs Harbour area of New South Wales and around Mullumbimby. Next time you grab a banana, consider the fact you’re about to devour the world’s very first fruit. Originally from the region that includes the Malay Peninsula, Indonesia, the Philippines and New Guinea, traders took bananas with them as they travelled to India, Africa and Polynesia. These bananas, however, barely resembled the fruit we know today. They contained many large, hard seeds and minimal pulp and were considered to be a strange and exotic alien fruit. Cross-breeding of two varieties of wild bananas, the Musa Acuminata and the Musa Baalbisiana, in Africa in about 650 AD, resulted in bananas becoming seedless and more like the delicious fruit we enjoy today. Source: australianbananas.com.au/Pages/all-about-bananas/the-bana...

Bananas are Australia’s largest horticultural industry and its bestselling supermarket item. Over ninety percent of Australia’s banana crop is produced in North Queensland. Banana plants were introduced to Australia in the early to mid-nineteenth century, with the first recorded cultivation taking place in Western Australia. At this point, Australia did not produce a commercial crop, with bananas intended for sale being imported from Fiji. Banana plants were probably first introduced to North Queensland in the 1870s by Chinese immigrants and Polynesians employed in the sugar industry. During the 1880s, Chinese immigrants began to cultivate fruit crops (including bananas) in the areas around Port Douglas, Cooktown, Cairns, and Innisfail. They became not only a regional success but a national one, with the Chinese community remaining the dominant force in Australia’s banana trade (both cultivation and importation) until the 1930s. The reasons for the Chinese community’s decline in influence after this point were multi-faceted, although discriminatory policies played a significant role. Shortly after federation, the Commonwealth Government passed the Immigration Restriction Act (1901), limiting ‘non-white’ immigration. Serving as the basis for the White Australia Policy, it particularly targeted Asian (especially Chinese) immigrants. Allowing immigration officers to administer a dictation test to prospective migrants in any European language (or, after 1905, any prescribed language), it facilitated indirect exclusion on racial grounds. The Queensland government also introduced legislation restricting the participation of non-European individuals in banana and sugarcane cultivation. In the tradition of the Immigration Restriction Act (1901), Queensland’s Banana Industry Preservation Act (1921) required ‘coloured’ labourers to pass a dictation test. North Queensland’s banana industry was also impacted by the return of older banana growers to China, a shift towards sugarcane cultivation among younger growers, and the difficulties posed by a combination of fruit fly contamination, cyclones, competition from Fijian imports, and transportation difficulties. The First World War had an especially devastating impact, with wartime shipping restrictions coinciding with disease outbreaks. The twentieth century was also defined by constant efforts to control the spread of bunchy top disease, an incurable viral infection, which prevents banana plants from producing fruit. (Thankfully, bunchy top has been prevented from gaining a foothold in North Queensland.) Nevertheless, banana growing only came back into its own in North Queensland following the Second World War. Source: queenslandhistory.org/2019/10/from-the-archives-early-ban...

Upper Coomera is located in the Gold Coast region and was first explored in 1827 by Captain Patrick Logan. It was initial a prominent area for its farming of sugar and maize and timber-getting for red ceder. However, by the 1950’s half of the agriculturalists were dairy farmers and there were also a few banana and fruit farmers[i]. One of these Banana farmers was George Chester, also known as the ‘Banana Case Baron’. He claimed to be the largest single banana producer in the CommonwSource: ealth, growing up to 35 tons per week. He also owned a sawmill in Pimpanan, where he would manufacture the banana cases and use the surplus timber to build new homes, largely in the suburb of Mt. Gravatt. He would become the first Brisbane’s sub-divider and home building[ii].Many of his workers were Italian migrants, who lived in rent free homes and arracks that he built for them[iii Source: queenslandhistory.org/2019/02/george-chester-the-banana-c...