bananas

Woombye, a rural township, is in the eastern foothills of the Blackall Range. Immediately south of Nambour, it is 85 km north of Brisbane. It is thought that the name was derived from an Aboriginal word describing the dark foliaged lilly pilly tree or, perhaps, the black snake. Fruit growing, particularly pineapples, was Woombye's economic mainstay. A local fruitgrowers' association was formed in 1898. Pugh's Queensland Directory (1904) recorded Woombye as having several storekeepers, Methodist and Anglican churches, a school of arts and a sawmill. As lumber needed for Brisbane building lessened, a new market for timber emerged with thousands of packing cases for fruit. Pineapple gluts were partially solved by Woombye's local school teacher who organized fast rail transport to carry fruit to southern capitals (1919). Two years later, by local initiative, a pulping plant was opened in Woombye. Pugh's 1925 directory described Woombye as being the centre of a large fruit-growing district, producing strawberries, citrus, bananas and pineapples in great quantities. Woombye's identification with the pineapple industry came to the fore with the opening of the Big Pineapple tourist attraction in 1971, a 16 metre fiberglass structure with an internal staircase and a lookout. It closed in 2010 when negotiations began to sell the site to the Bowden family, with plans to redevelop it to incorporate their extensive collection of motor racing vehicles. Source: queenslandplaces.com.au/woombye

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...

"Come Mr. Tally Man, tally de Banana daylight come and I want to go home" (somebody had to say it)

I think that the guy on the rudder, is Fu Manchu.