File:Banana Punts on the Johnstone River.jpg

English: From The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, Wednesday 5 April, 1911:

CHINAMEN IN QUEENSLAND

BY FLINDERINO.

A visit to a Chinaman's banana plantation in Queensland is not without interest. Almost every little track branching off from the roads in the Cairns and Johnstone River districts leads to a fruit garden and a Chinaman's humpy. These gardens are not very large, most of them consisting of only 5 acres. The Celestial does not own the land whereon he grows his bananas, but pays rent - usually £1 a year for each acre. Out of 5 acres a Chimaman makes a living, and can save enough money in three or four years to pay a visit to his native land.

And it is astonishing how much he can get from such a small area. In addition to bananas, he finds room for pineapples, paw-paws, granadillas, oranges, mandarins, watermelons, mangoes and a large variety of vegetables. In between whiles he finds room and time to keep a fair-sized poultry-farm. An experienced grower informed me that with proper management, a 2-acre plantation of bananas can be made to yield a 100 bunches a week all the year round.

The dwelling-house of the Celestial fruitgrower is usually a two-roomed slab humpy. Some of these mansions are held to the ground by long lengths of lawyer vine passed over the roof, each end of the vine being weighed with heavy pieces of wood. Unpleasant experiences of past cyclones have taught the Chinaman this trick. The whole plantation is surrounded with a barbed wire fence to keep out wallabies and straying cattle.

A mob of wallaby would play havoc with a fruit and vegetable garden if given the chance. But the Chinaman takes the precaution to keep half-a-dozen dogs and a double-barrelled gun always in readiness for the marsupials. Water is the chief concern of the garderner, and if a permanent creek is not handy, a weel must be dug. The well-to-do gardener owns a horse and cart, but the majority have to carry their produce into town in baskets carried on shoulder-poles.

Many of the gardens are situated alongside creeks and waterways, and the urrounding scrub is so thick that communication with the town must be by water. These waterside planters build flat-bottomed punts or junks for conveying their fruits to market. Nearly all the streams are tidal, and the Chinaman knows how to avoid hard labour by studying the tides, and arranging his boat trips accordingly. He goes down to the town on an ebb tide, and returns with the flood tide. And in watering his garden, he must also consider the state of the tide - that is, if he uses creek water.

Some of the so-called freshwater streams contain a lot of salt water during the high tide. On the Johnstone River, and at Maria Creek and the Tully, the banana-laden junks are emptied directly into the small river steamers, which tranship at Townsville or Cairns to the large southern boats. Of recent years there has been a marked decrease in the number of Chinese plantations in Northern Queensland, but large areas of new land are being opened up, and there promises to be a revival in the banana industry.

QSA Item ID 436313 View this and other original records at the Queensland State Archives: Series ID 192

Department number A271