Men Who Built Queensland Part 2
The Farmers
by Doug Patterson
Background
When Queensland was declared a colony in 1859, it had an estimated European population of under 25,000 concentrated in the Southeast and an estimated Aboriginal population of over 100,000. It had a struggling economy based on wheat and sheep farming on the Darling Downs and coal mined around Ipswich. Small mixed farms grew the basics: potatoes, wheat, corn, bananas and sugar cane and ran very small herds of cattle, although records tell us that there were only 12 dairy cows registered in the state. By the mid-1860s, the colony was almost bankrupted, and the discovery of gold around Gympie in 1867 is credited with saving the state’s economy.
After colonisation, a number of areas north of Brisbane were gradually opened up for selection following the success of earlier selections around Petrie, Bald Hills, Durundur and Caboolture. These included Peach Trees (Peachester), 1860; Obi Obi Creek (Maleny), 1868; Cobbs Camp (Woombye), 1869; Buderim, 1869; Mellum Creek (Landsborough), 1871; Luton Vale (Mapleton), 1880 and Razorback (Montville), 1881. By 1868, these settlements could be accessed via a Cobb and Co stage route from Petrie to Gympie, with major overnight staging posts at Grigor’s Bankfoot House in the Glasshouse Mountains and Cobb’s Camp, Woombye, for the three-day trip.
By 1875, a western railway line was completed from Brisbane to Toowoomba through Ipswich so the produce of the Darling Downs could be shipped out of Brisbane instead of Sydney. Then, in 1888, a northern railway line was commenced to link Brisbane to Gympie. It was built quickly, reaching Caboolture in 1889, Landsborough in 1890 and Woombye, Nambour and Gympie in 1891. This boosted farm productivity by providing quick, reliable access to southern markets. The travel time by train from Brisbane to Gympie was now reduced to one day.
Changing Farm Practice
The most successful of the early farmers on the Blackall Range included John Simpson (Bunya Aris), Maleny; Fred Smith (Orange Grove) and Henry Smith (Eastnor), Montville; and William Smith (Sea View) and Thomas Smith (Belleville Orchard), Mapleton. Although they began as mixed crop farms, the Smith Brothers had been successful banana growers in Redland Bay and had brought banana suckers with them when they relocated to the Range. Bananas quickly became the main cash crop from Mapleton to Maleny.
However, by 1892, the Mapleton Smiths and Joseph Dixon (Chermside), Flaxton began planting citrus orchards, soon followed by the Montville Smiths and George Butt, Montville. However, the southern end of the range had a much wetter climate and turned to dairy farming instead of citrus. Both ventures proved extremely successful in the short term.
Henry Smith became a horticulturalist, improving crop yields and developing new strains such as the Glen Retreat Mandarins, which he successfully exported to Asia and London. His business grew to sell grafted saplings, and much of the central and northern areas of the range became citrus orchards. However, monoculture agricultural practices expose crops to pest infections and soil degradation, and after years of boom, farmers had to find an alternative cash crop.
In 1905, Alfred Bowser (Ivyholme) introduced pineapples, and it became the main crop through the first quarter of the twentieth century, but it suffered the same fate as the citrus industry. In 1930, Bowser turned to macadamia nut farming, but this was not as successful, followed by avocados. This led most Montville farms to expand to grow a mix of fruit to better respond to market and seasonal fluctuations.
Another influential farmer in the 1920s was Henry Wilfrid Walker (The Limit), Flaxton. Walker was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society with an international reputation as an explorer, adventurer and natural scientist and had some experience in citrus farming in California. He quickly improved the productivity of the Limit’s orchards, and a long list of prominent national and international visitors meant greater recognition of the area’s fruit-growing status.
At the Maleny end of the Blackall Range, a cream-only dairy industry also took off. As early as 1899, Bergann’s farm at Witta was producing cheese. Then, in 1903 the Maleny Co-operative Dairy Association was established, opening its first butter factory in 1904 with subsequent factories later opening in Maple Street and Coral Street. This cream-only industry led many dairy farmers to establish piggeries to make use of the milk by-products.
The agricultural prospects of the ‘North Coast’ hinterland were recognised when the Australian government committed almost 60,000 acres between Elimbah and Beerburrum to assist returning WWI soldiers to take up farming citrus and pineapple. Applicants won the right to farm through ballots, but the farms themselves were quite small, between 20 and 40 acres compared with the 120 acres of neighbouring selections. Although the Beerburrum Soldier Resettlement Scheme was not successful in itself, later farms confirmed the area was suitable for fruit farming.
This led to an expansion of fruit growing across the hinterland and the Montville Fruit Growers and Progress Association became active in supporting the formation of a cooperative, the Committee of Direction, to represent north coast fruit growers in how best to market their produce. In response to an eventual over-supply of fruit, this cooperative established a cannery in Northgate, Brisbane, to preserve excess fruit for export. The Golden Circle Cannery was an instant success and has grown into one of the largest fruit preserving companies in the world. For its first 30 years, John Brown, a son of a Montville farming family, was Managing Director of the Golden Circle Cannery.
For most of the twentieth century, Blackall Range farmers fed Southeast Queensland fruit,
butter and cheese until small-scale farming became increasingly uncompetitive.
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