Category: Queensland State Archives’ Photostream About Fortitude Valley

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Romance of Food: Bananas

We have no figures of the number of bananas the average Australian eats in a year, but before they were rationed in England every person in Britain consumed an average of ninety bananas per annum.
Though it is the most popular of tropical fruits, the banana has risen to fame only in comparatively recent times. Until a generation ago bananas were looked upon as a rare tropical luxury in Europe. They were curiosities even seventy or so years ago, and few people had seen a banana much less eaten one.
It was not until the last decade of the 19th century that the art of successfully importing bananas began to be mastered, and cultivation of the fruit on a commercial scale began in the West Indies.
The original home of the banana is the moist tropical regions of southern Asia. Even in 327 B.C. the

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Lychee (variously spelled litchi, liechee, liche, lizhi or li zhi, or lichee) is a tropical tree native to the Guangdong and Fujian provinces of China, where cultivation is documented from 1059 AD. China is the main producer of lychees, followed by India, other countries in Southeast Asia, the Indian Subcontinent and South Africa.

A tall evergreen tree, the lychee bears small fleshy fruits. The outside of the fruit is pink-red, roughly textured and inedible, covering sweet flesh eaten in many different dessert dishes. Since the perfume-like flavour is lost in the process of canning, the fruit is usually eaten fresh.

Lychees are extensively grown in China, India, Thailand, Vietnam and the rest of sub-tropical Southeast Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, and more recently in South Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean, Australia and the United States.

They require a tropical climate that is frost-free and is not below the temperature

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The Banana Story

Next time you grab a banana, consider the fact that 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 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.

Origins of Pineapples

Pineapples are thought to have originated in Brasil and Paraguay in South America. They were first discovered by Europeans in 1493 on the Caribbean Island now known as Guadeloupe. Pineapples arrived in

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Grow A Custard Apple Tree.
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How To Prune It.

The young fruit of the custard apples are making good progress now, and should reach the ripening stage in a couple of months. If planted in a part of the garden where plenty of water is available these trees will bear a prolific crop of fruit, and are an acquisition to any garden plot.
When planted out, the trees should be put back to a height of about 20 to 24 inches, and the two top buds which are on opposite sides of the stem be allowed to develop. The following spring these two branches should be cut back to not more than one foot in length, less if growth is weak, and each allowed to develop two buds, a young tree, having four main limbs, being thus formed.
These four branches are again cut back the following spring, only

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Making full use of a new fig crop

This week’s basic recipe section deals with the subject of figs – delicious, delicate fruit that comes in with a rush and has to be dealt with quickly.
A letter from Mrs. Shirley Cane, Pacific Highway, Slack’s Creek, reminds us that the fig crop is now ready and in a week or so will have reached its peak.
Mrs. Cane said trees in the Sunnybank area were now heavy with fruit, and that while figs were “pricey” in the shops they could be purchased from the growers at a much reduced rate.
Here are some of the fig recipes she recommends:-
For dessert
The ripe fruit simply peeled, chopped, and sprinkled with a little lemon juice and sugar is ready to be served with cream, ice cream, or custard. Stewed whole and unpeeled (prick over with a fork to allow the syrup to

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Many fig tree varieties crop twice each. The first (or breba) crop form on last years wood. It is often possible to see the tiny fruits dormant on the tree over winter. A heavier crop is then produced later in summer when the new growth develops.

Fruit normally forms in the leaf axils on new wood, so pruning a fig is a straightforward and infrequent task. Give it a light trim in winter to stimulate new growth for fruiting, but leave some old wood on the tree for the breba fruiting. Dead and diseased wood should be removed and more mature trees may need heavier pruning to encourage new growth.

Harvesting is the best part of growing a fabulous fig. Fruit should be picked when they are slightly soft to the touch and smelling sweet. Figs will not continue to ripen once they have been removed from

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…and Celebrities

Agatha Christie visited soon after the Prince.

According to Tim Bell, Agatha Christie met his great aunt and uncle, Una and Bert, who were down at Sydney. Agatha’s husband, Archibald Christie, was interested in flying and Bert Bell started talking about planes.

Una, the eldest sister started talking with Agatha Christie, who admitted she was getting a little bored. Una asked ‘Would she like to come and see a cattle property up in Queensland?’ and so Agatha went and spent a week at Coochin without her husband; he went up afterwards.

According to Gertrude Bell’s diaries, Agatha Christie loved being at Coochin. They put a concert on the Saturday night at the Mt Alford School of Arts. Agatha was part and parcel of the performance, she sang at the concert, wrote skits, and helped make costumes and decorate the hall.

In the tradition of notable guests planting a

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Royals…

The first two trees – two jacarandas – were planted in 1907 by Lord and Lady Chelmsford. The Prince planted a palm tree, the Queen Mother a hoop pine, which continues to thrive.

The Prince of Wales visited Coochin Coochin in 1920 during his visit to Australia, because the Captain of his ship, Captain North, was a relative of Gertrude Bell’s. While he only intended to stay one night in order to attend a function held in Boonah, he ended up staying five nights due to flooding in Wallace Creek from heavy rain.

According to Gertrude’s diary he played tennis, went mustering and enjoyed dancing at night during his time at Coochin. Some versions of local history claim there was an assassination attempt on the Prince by a drunk but there were no mentions of this in Gertrude’s diaries.

The Queen Mother visited Coochin in 1958,

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Gertrude Bell is affectionaly known as ‘Granny’ by the current resident Bells. She is Tim Bell’s great grandmother and her candid and extensive diaries have given an insight into life at Coochin in those early days.

Before taking the name Bell, she was Gertrude Norton and lived in a large and affluent home at Darling Point in Sydney. She was just 18 when she met James at a garden party in Sydney. He was in town on business and for 10 days he romanced the much younger Gertrude. On his final day in Sydney the then 35-year-old proposed to Gertrude. She accepted.

Between 1875 and 1882 Gertrude and James lived at Camboon, the family cattle property in central Queensland. Gertrude initially found the remote location difficult to take; she had been an eager and willing participant of the Sydney social scene prior to marrying.

While living at Camboon,

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Coochin Coochin homestead is one of the Scenic Rim’s oldest homes, and for the past 110 years it has been maintained by the Bell Family.

The Coochin Coochin story has its beginnings in 1842 when the 120,000 acre property was first established. This sprawling run stretched from the outskirts of the town of Boonah, south to the New South Wales border, and west to the Mt Alford range.

David Hunter applied for the first grazing lease in September 1842 and named the area Dulhunty Plains, apparently after a ‘very well respected Sydney family’.

By 1870 Thomas Alford was the owner-manager of the property which was now known as Coochin Coochin, meaning ‘Many black swans’, because there were many swans living on the large lagoon.

He moved the Coochin homestead to its existing site in the centre of the property, high on the hill to avoid floods, and from where

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