loads

...instead of a train !

Chinese labourers were an important element of the workforce hired by Europeanlandowners to operate the sugar cane farms. The Chinese were also renowned for their practice of market gardening in the Cairns district. Market gardeners grew an extensive assortment of fruit and vegetables which was vital to the sustenance of early settlement in the region. Besides sugar, the local Chinese population was heavily involved in the cultivation of bananas, especially around Geraldton (now Innisfail) and the Johnstone River. This was a major agricultural export industry, which the Chinese helped to expand until the mid-1900s. Regrettably, the local Chinese population was greatly reduced as a result of the post-Federation legislation designed to limit the arrival of Chinese immigrants and restrict the productive activities of those who remained in Australia. As part of the 'White Australia' policies, these legislative changes had devastated the Chinese as a distinct group in agriculture in the Cairns district by 1920. Source: www.academia.edu/18059032/The_Chinese_Contribution_to_Agr...

Timber getters and their bullock teams are long gone. However, they played a major role in the development of early North Coast settlements. Bullock teams hauled logs to a waterway, or in the steep country to chutes, where the logs could be launched. Bullock teams hauled the timber out of the forests to the sawmills, the railway stations and also to the wharves for the journey to Brisbane. There were often several bullock teams in and around railway yards at one time. A bullock team consists of 12 to 24 desexed bulls (they can be of any breed) that are paired to perform heavy work. Bullocks were named and answered to their name. The pairs were generally named with alliteration – Ringer and Ranger, Tom and Tiger, or Sam and Sonny. The key to operating the team was creating a bond between the working pair and training an excellent pair as leaders. The bullocks who made up the team behind the leaders were called the polers. A good team could pull a load of up to ten tons of weight. With strong necks, they were then yoked together, which transferred their power through a pole or chain to pull the heavy load – either timber or other agricultural loads. Source; www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/ringer-and-ranger-tom-and-tiger-n...

Cool shot! I always found it interesting how Austrialia imported camels into the country.

Afghan cameleers in Australia Afghan cameleers in Australia, also known as "Afghans" or "Ghans", were camel drivers who worked in Outback Australia from the 1860s to the 1930s. Small groups of cameleers were shipped in and out of Australia at three-year intervals, to service the Australian inland pastoral industry by carting goods and transporting wool bales by camel trains. They were commonly referred to as "Afghans", even though a lot of them originated from the far western parts of British India, primarily Balochistan and the NWFP, which was inhabited by ethnic Afghans and Balochs, nonetheless many were from Afghanistan itself as well, in addition to that there were also some with origins in Egypt and Turkey.[1] The majority of cameleers, including Indian cameleers, were Muslim, while a sizeable minority were Sikhs from the Punjab region. They set up camel-breeding stations and rest-house outposts, known as caravanserai, throughout inland Australia, creating a permanent link between the coastal cities and the remote cattle and sheep grazing stations until about the 1930s, when they were largely replaced by the automobile.[1] They included members of the Pashtun, Baloch, and Sindhi ethnic groups from south-central Asia (present-day Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan); others from the Punjabi, Kashmir, and Rajasthan regions of the Indian subcontinent; as well as people from Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. They provided vital support to exploration, communications and settlement in the arid interior of the country where the climate was too harsh for horses. They also played a major role in establishing Islam in Australia, building the country's first mosque at Marree in South Australia in 1861, the Central Adelaide Mosque (the first permanent mosque in Adelaide, still in use today), and several mosques in Western Australia. Many of the cameleers and their families later returned to their homelands, but many remained and turned to other trades and ways of making a living. Today, many people can trace their ancestry back to the early cameleers, many of whom intermarried with local Aboriginal women in outback Australia. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_cameleers_in_Australia