Australasia: Eight Lectures Prepared for the Visual Instruction Committee of the Colonial OfficeSargent, A. J. (Arthur John)
History
Australasia: Eight Lectures Prepared for the Visual Instruction Committee of the Colonial Office
Sargent, A. J. (Arthur John)
Australasia -- Description and travel
Sugar is one of the most interesting and valuable of the tropical
products of the coast region; but many others are grown, some for
the market, others hardly beyond the experimental stage. Let us
look at some of these. Here at Woombye are pineapples and bananas 33
growing; and on the Johnstone River huge crates of bananas are 34
being shipped for the markets in the towns further south. At
Kuranda, on the Barron River, is a large coffee plantation where 35
we may see the bushes growing and follow the berry as it is
dried and husked. Here we notice the pruning of the coffee bush, 36
and here is a fine specimen with the pruning completed. Not far 37
away, in the State Nursery at Kamerunga, we find all kinds of
tropical plants growing side by side. The nursery is an official
experiment ground, since the Government is anxious to test the
possibilities of the region for all kinds of economic plants. We
walk down a fine avenue of palms and visit the quarter where they 38
are experimenting with rubber trees. Here is a large plantation 39
of the trees, and here we see the method of tapping. In a corner 40
we come on a curious African rubber tree, in which the juice
exudes, not from the bark, but from the fruit. More prosaic, but 41
none the less useful, are the fibre plants, such as sisal hemp,
of which we have a fine specimen here. Cotton-growing has also 42
been attempted on a small scale, and the Commonwealth Government
provides a bounty for its encouragement. The main difficulty is
the high cost of labour for its cultivation. Here we see the
picking of the cotton. We may gain some idea from these gardens 43
of the great variety of tropical and sub-tropical plants, all of
which will grow well on some part of this northern coast. The
only need is labour to clear the scrub and make full use of the
fertile alluvial soil and the warm rains.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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