Details
Although bananas have been grown in Australia since the 1830s they were not commercially produced until the 1880s when crops from Queensland were transported south. Chinese played a dominant role in both the growing and importation of bananas across Australia until the 1930s and continue to be active in the area today.
The quick turn over of the banana crop which could be harvested continually once it reached maturity made it an ideal crop for many sojourning Chinese. Queensland was the main supplier of bananas in Australia. The Cairns and Geraldton (Innisfail from 1909) districts were particularly suited to banana growing. Much of the land in these areas was cleared by Chinese banana growers due to the practice of clearing new land to plant new crops rather than replanting areas that had been already cleared. The early prosperity and survival of the Cairns and Innisfail area has been directly attributed to the success of the Chinese in the banana industry. Both Chinese and non-Chinese businesses in these towns developed to provide goods and services to Chinese banana growers. Chinese merchants in particular played in important role as commission agents and assisting growers with finance.
The move into banana wholesaling and distribution appears to have been a natural extension of the dominance of Chinese growers. It was common for commission agents to negotiate between the growers and city wholesale merchants. A number of large Chinese wholesale fruit merchants formed in both Sydney and Melbourne at the beginning of the century and profited from Chinese involvement in banana growing. A number were very successful. Chinese merchants held over half of the banana trade in both Sydney and Melbourne in the 1900s and also distributed fruit to country towns. Fruit merchants replaced storekeepers and grocers as the new merchant elite within the Chinese community. Capital from fruit merchant firms was used in the establishment of a number of the largest department stores in Hong Kong, Canton and Shanghai and in the formation of the China-Australia Mail Steamship Line.
By the 1930s Chinese dominance in both growing and wholesaling of bananas had dissipated. In Queensland the older banana growers were returning the China and the younger Chinese in the area found sugar cane to be a more reliable crop. In the first decade of the century the wholesale of Queensland bananas had been unfavourably affected by fruit fly contamination, severe cyclones, delays due to World War I, poor transportation and competition from Fijian bananas which were considered to be a better banana. There was also a limit placed on the amount of land that could be leased by Chinese to grow bananas and incentives for 'white' growers to enter the industry.
When supplies of Queensland bananas were unreliable some Chinese merchants in Melbourne and Sydney survived this through diversification into other markets and fruits. Some began importing Fijian bananas and some even established their own plantations in Fiji. However the introduction of increasing tariff duties between 1911 and 1920 on Fijian bananas eventually made them unprofitable. During World War I a number of Chinese merchants from Sydney also began purchasing land in the Tweed River area of northern NSW for banana growing. After the war returned soldiers also began purchasing land there with the resulting competition leading to discontent and eventually anti-Chinese race riots in 1919. Chinese merchants in Sydney and the Chinese Consul-General tried to dampen racial animosity. A devistating outbreak of 'bunchy top' virus severely set back the fledgely banana industry in NSW quelling racial tensions. In Queensland the government was also concerned developing a 'white' banana industry. In 1921 they passed the Banana Industry Preservation Bill designed to prevent coloured labour, including Chinese labour from entering the industry without passing a 50-word dictation test in any prescribed language directed by the Secretary for Agriculture.
In Melbourne in the 1880s the majority of Chinese banana merchants established their businesses and ripening rooms in Little Bourke Street. Bananas arrived at the wharfs where they were loaded onto horse-drawn open lorries and transported to ripening rooms in Little Bourke Street. Bananas were ripened in special rooms that were heated with a mix of raw gas and ethylene. From Little Bourke Street bananas were taken to the major wholesale or retail markets for sale. After 1930 Chinese banana merchant firms began to diversify into fruit and vegetable merchants or close their business. The fruit and vegetable wholesale industry became centralised at the Queen Victoria Market and banana storage and ripening rooms moved to the new market and out of Melbourne's Chinatown.
Sources used to compile this entry: Blake, Alison, 'Melbourne's Chinatown: The evolution of an inner ethnic quarter', BA (hons) Thesis, Department of Geography, University of Melbourne, 1975; Bolton, G. C., A Thousand Miles Away: A History of North Queensland to 1920, ANU Press, Australian Capital Territory, 1970; Couchman, Sophie, 'The banana trade: Its importance to Melbourne's Chinese and Little Bourke Street, 1880s-1930s', in P. Macgregor (ed.), Histories of the Chinese in Australasia and the South Pacific, Museum of Chinese Australian History, Melbourne, 1995, pp. 75-90; Couchman, Sophie, 'Tong Yun Gai (Street of the Chinese): Investigating patterns of work and social life in Melbourne's Chinatown 1900-1920', MA thesis, School of Historical Studies, Monash University, 2001; Loading bananas in Innisfail, c1900 [Photograph], Date: c. 1900 Place: Australia - Queensland - Innisfail (Geraldton); May, Cathie R., Topsawyers: The Chinese in Cairns, 1870-1920, James Cook University, History Department, Queensland, 1984; Yong, C. F., 'The banana trade and the Chinese in NSW and Victoria, 1901-1921', ANU Historical Journal, vol. 1, no. 2, 1964, pp. 28-35; Yong, C.F., New Gold Mountain: The Chinese in Australia 1901-1920, Raphael Arts, South Australia, 1977.
Prepared by: Sophie Couchman, La Trobe University
Related Subjects
Archival Collections
Chinese Museum (Museum of Chinese Australian History)
- Cathy May collection; Chinese Museum (Museum of Chinese Australian History). Details
- Norma King Koi collection, NKK; Chinese Museum (Museum of Chinese Australian History). Details
Published Resources
Books
- Bolton, G. C., A Thousand Miles Away: A History of North Queensland to 1920, ANU Press, Australian Capital Territory, 1970. Details
- May, Cathie R., Topsawyers: The Chinese in Cairns, 1870-1920, James Cook University, History Department, Queensland, 1984. Details
- Yong, C.F., New Gold Mountain: The Chinese in Australia 1901-1920, Raphael Arts, South Australia, 1977. Details
Book Sections
- Couchman, Sophie, 'The banana trade: Its importance to Melbourne's Chinese and Little Bourke Street, 1880s-1930s', in P. Macgregor (ed.), Histories of the Chinese in Australasia and the South Pacific, Museum of Chinese Australian History, Melbourne, 1995, pp. 75-90. Details
Journal articles
- Yong, C. F., 'The banana trade and the Chinese in NSW and Victoria, 1901-1921', ANU Historical Journal, vol. 1, no. 2, 1964, pp. 28-35. Details
Theses
- Blake, Alison, 'Melbourne's Chinatown: The evolution of an inner ethnic quarter', BA (hons) Thesis, Department of Geography, University of Melbourne, 1975. Details
- Couchman, Sophie, 'Tong Yun Gai (Street of the Chinese): Investigating patterns of work and social life in Melbourne's Chinatown 1900-1920', MA thesis, School of Historical Studies, Monash University, 2001. Details
Online Resources
- Leong Har: Successful banana merchant, http://arrow.latrobe.edu.au/store/3/4/5/5/1/public/leong_har.htm. Details
See also
- '[Yin Bun Lowe cookstore, unloading bananas in Little Bourke Street, 1899]', The Leader, 11 February, p. 34. Details
Images
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- Title
- Loading bananas in Innisfail, c1900
- Type
- Photograph
- Date
- c. 1900
- Place
- Australia - Queensland - Innisfail (Geraldton)
- Details
See also
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- Title
- Banana crop believed to be growing in a Chinese market garden
- Type
- Photograph
- Date
- c. 1912
- Place
- Australia - Northern Territory - Pine Creek
- Details
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-
- Title
- Chinese labourers loading bananas onto a steamer at Geraldton (Innisfail) or Mouilyan, 1906
- Type
- Photograph
- Date
- c. 1900 - c. 1906
- Place
- Australia - Queensland - Mouilyan
- Details
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-
- Title
- Chinese transporting bananas by punt, Innisfail area, Northern Queensland
- Type
- Photograph
- Place
- Australia - Queensland - Innisfail (Geraldton) - Johnstone River
- Details
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-
- Title
- Chinn brothers at Victoria Market, ca 1960s
- Type
- Photograph
- Date
- 1960s
- Place
- Australia - Victoria - Melbourne - Queen Victoria Market
- Details
-
-
- Title
- Loading bananas from sampans onto the S.S. Seymour on the Tully River
- Type
- Photograph
- Date
- 1907
- Place
- Australia - Queensland
- Details
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-
- Title
- Loading bananas on to boats on the Johnstone River, Queensland, 1922
- Type
- Photograph
- Date
- c. 1922
- Place
- Australia - Queensland - Innisfail (Geraldton) - Johnstone River
- Details
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-
- Title
- S.S. Caroo being loaded with bananas
- Type
- Photograph
- Date
- 1890s
- Place
- Australia - Queensland - Innisfail (Geraldton)
- Details
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-
- Title
- Small grass thatched hut with unidentified Chinese market gardener
- Type
- Photograph
- Date
- c. 1889 - c. 1890
- Place
- Australia - Queensland - Cairns
- Details
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-
- Title
- Transporting bananas on punts near Innisfail
- Type
- Photograph
- Place
- Australia - Queensland
- Details
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-
- Title
- Unidentified Chinese market gardeners in garden with bananas behind
- Type
- Photograph
- Date
- c. 1885
- Place
- Australia - Northern Territory
- Details
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-
- Title
- Unidentified Chinese worker carrying bananas to a train, near Innisfail
- Type
- Photograph
- Place
- Australia - Queensland - Innisfail (Geraldton)
- Details
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-
- Title
- Unidentified gardener in front of banana crop
- Type
- Photograph
- Date
- c. 1928 - c. 1931
- Place
- Australia - Northern Territory
- Details
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-
- Title
- Yin Bun Lowe cookstore, unloading bananas in Little Bourke Street
- Type
- Photograph
- Date
- c. 11 February 1899
- Place
- Australia - Victoria - Melbourne - Little Bourke Street
- Details
Created: 11 July 2001, Last modified: 20 September 2005
