innisfail

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...

The link, captioned above as "Find out more about this photograph" is malformed (it tries to go to another Flickr page). I do wish all of the supplemental information for photographs in your amazing collections was included on the individual Flickr page ... rather than having to click on the "Find out more" link for every photograph!

Thanks for pointing out the incorrect link, Pixel Wrangler. Including more information about each photo on the individual Flickr pages is definitely something for the State Library team to consider before our next batch upload.

The Catholic Church in Innisfail is dedicated to Mary, Mother of Good Counsel (‘Mater Boni Consilii’), a title of Mary, Mother of God, closely associated with the Augustinian Order of priests, who served this parish from the 1880s to 1993. The present church on the corner of Grace and Rankin Streets was the third built in Innisfail. In 1885, the land was purchased in Owen Street for a church that was built in 1891. It stood on the hill facing Owen Street, approximately where the storage shed adjacent to the presbytery carport now stands. Beside it on the Grace Street side of the hill was a separate bell tower. This church was dedicated to the Mother of Good Counsel. It suffered significant wear and tear in a short time, the result of termites, etc, and of severe heat and heavy rain. A cyclone in 1906 caused such further damage that it was decided to build another church. A second church was built, larger and stronger than the first, of silky oak and cedar, on the other side of the bell tower which survived the cyclone intact. On Sunday, March 10, 1918, a cyclone of unimagined ferocity caused enormous damage to the town and district and, although not completely destroying the church, making it irreparable. The church was rebuilt and reinforced several times as cyclones in this area were very destructive. On March 20, 2006, severe cyclone ‘Larry’ caused havoc in and around Mother of Good Counsel Church: windows were shattered, the church structure was weakened and in many places ruined as some of the roofing and the silky oak rafters were torn away. Flying debris from within and without made the church unsafe for the duration of the cyclone and for some time afterward. In 2009, the church was repaired and renewed; there has been a transformation – a death and resurrection. The severe damage provided the opportunity to redesign in particular the altar and sanctuary, to accord with liturgical requirements. This has been done by Architect, Steve Gleeson, who has highlighted theological insights of Vatican II using the best of modern methods and technology while preserving the integrity, simplicity, and harmony of the original design of the church. Bishop James Foley provided much helpful advice in the redesigning. Source: www.gcparish.org.au/Pages/History.html