beerburrum

Grading tobacco at Beerburrum ca. 1935

from State Library of Queensland

• Vesna Verencevic said:

  By 1931, many people were unemployed all over Queensland and the government decided to introduce a scheme to remedy this situation. In an attempt to create work for unemployed, the Queensland Minister for Agriculture, Mr Bulcock, introduced a Tobacco Settlement Scheme which would allow those unemployed to become tobacco growers on the abandoned Soldier Settlement pineapple farms. A state farm west of Beerburrum was set up to raise the tobacco plants in a nursery and the seedlings were then transported to the tobacco farmer’s plots. Preference was given to large families. Each family was supplied with a plot of land, a cow and a house. If homes from the original settlement were not available on plots selected, an interesting method of construction was used. Tobacco growing is known as a difficult crop to cultivate. Unfortunately due to inexperience and unfavourable weather conditions the farmers encountered many difficulties. The area received large catchments of rain during the period 1933 to 1934. Many tobacco curing barns dotted the landscape and there was also a community curing barn for small farms which may not have warranted their own curing barn. Sorting of cured leaf was done at the Soldier Settlement State farm at Beerburrum. By 1934 problems were again encountered and by the following year most curing barns had been demolished. Only a few tobacco farms still functioned. Source: www.sunshinecoast.qld.gov.au/Council/News-Centre/Backward...