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The Early War Years By the outbreak of WW2 most of the Greeks in the banana game were still playing around Main Arm, which continued as the leading production area in the Brunswick valley. At this time Main Arm had a population of 480, making it the largest rural community in the Tweed–Brunswick region. By the close of 1941 however, it was overtaken by Burringbar as the largest population centre, but still retained its edge in banana production while clearing and planting progressed at Burringbar. By mid 1944 Main Arm had 1375 acres under bananas, a third of the entire acreage in the Brunswick Valley, and attempts were made to form a separate BGF branch by carving off Palmwoods, the largest area of thriving banana plantations in one spot in New South Wales, where 600 acres were under cultivation. This was an initiative of the cunning Tom Mott who saw an opportunity to get an extra delegate onto the Brunswick Valley District Council. The Main Arm timber industry was also large, with 4 mills turning out 200,000 x 1½ bushel banana cases per year. The Palmwoods Estate was established in 1926 by the Gaggin brother and sister who died within a couple of years of each other in the latter war years. Mr Gaggin’s funeral in early 1945 had many civic and banana industry mourners, including Andrew and Nick Alidenes, still hiding under the name Lambros, as pall bearers. Another pallbearer was J. Cranney, the son-in-law of Elias Cokinos of Tweed Heads. An example of Main Arm muscle occurred at a meeting of 60 growers on 22Apr41 to unanimously endorse the Independent, Mr F. W. Stuart, for the seat of Byron in the state elections because his old nemesis, the sitting Country Party member Mr A. E. Budd, had not made good on his election promise to do something about the state of the Main Arm road, isolating over 500 ‘settlers’ from Mullumbimby. Joe Vlismas was elected as one of the committee members to work on behalf of Stuart’s election, but may have regretted his allegiance when Stuart became a leading anti-alien agitator in the Murbah district shortly afterwards. The Main Arm action proved effective and caused Budd to come running, promising the world, and a rival committee was formed to have him re-elected. The chair of the meeting and president of the Main Arm BGF Branch was Mr Tom Mott, elected 3 years later as the first president of the Mullum branch of the ALP. In the meantime Mott had also sought election to the Byron Shire Council in 1941, but the Shire Clerk rejected his nomination on the grounds that he’d neglected to fill out his ‘occupation’ on the application form. Mott was a popular figure in the district and this action, only found out after the final list of nominations was published, drew a large protest meeting at Main Arm. The clerk remained steadfast however, commenting if a man hasn’t sufficient intelligence to fill his form in correctly why should I get in touch with him. Local politics is still good fun. The election in May saw a Labour Government installed after 9yrs in the wilderness but Budd was returned in Byron, albeit with a reduced majority. (Budd 7867 votes v. Stuart 6157. In 1938 it was Budd 7986 and Stuart 5849.) By mid 1945 Main Arm was generating £250,000 worth of produce and Mr Mott was still lobbying over the state of the road, which in the end was fixed and maintained by the growers themselves by a 6d a case levy. And in late 1946 he led a delegation to Byron Shire Council to throw another £3000 on the table, demanding that the council and the Government match the contribution because ... There are now 800 persons residing in the vicinity of Main Arm, an increase of 25% over pre war days... Tom was on the council by early 1948 when he discovered that it had never got the Government grant and was in serious financial trouble. The Banana Growers Federation was able to exercise powerful political influence through its founder, Mr Larry Anthony MHR, for a number of years … the largest grower of bananas in the Commonwealth. In early 1940 he attended a meeting of the Tweed District Council and advised that he would always be ‘on guard’ in Federal Parliament in the interests of the banana growers … And said he followed with interest the work being done to improve the banana industry, particularly that of the district councils... They certainly used him. At this time the BGF had 1360 members, representing 75% of commercial banana growers. The Brunswick Valley District Council represented banana growers from Byron Bay to Upper Burringbar, where production was growing rapidly and by late 1945 had surpassed the Tweed (temporarily) in acreage to become the largest banana-producing district in the country. The Brunswick’s influence was recognised at the BGF AGM in late 1946 when the meeting voted to increase the number of Brunswick Valley directors on the board from two to three. Hubert Lawrence (Larry) Anthony took the seat of Richmond, the safest of safe conservative seats, from the sitting Country Party Member, Roland Green, in 1937 with the help of Labour preferences. In the election of late 1940 he consolidated his position and romped home with 66% of the vote (Mullum 79%, Murbah 59%), and comfortably held the seat until his death in 1957. The Richmond electorate at that time stretched from the border down to Evans Head and up to Glen Innes and Tenterfield, encompassing 55,000 eligible voters. He never had any need to court the inconsequential ‘alien vote’.
Stanley Tunstall Stephens, the former proprietor
of The Mullum Star until enlisting in 1940, became the major
player at State level after replacing Mr Budd MLA in 1944. He said he
attributed his majority – the largest anti-labour majority polled in the history
of Byron – chiefly to the wonderful cooperation and work of the Mullumbimby
(Country Party) Branch. He had a dream run, usually being elected
unopposed through to taking his pension in 1973. The minor earthquake that occurred in Mullum when the local branch of the Labour Party was reformed on 24Feb44 passed without traumatising any citizens. It was pointed out at the meeting that 80% of the electors of the district earned their living by ‘the sweat of their brow’ and theoretically were potential ALP voters who had allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by the UAP and UCP, but they could never sell this message. Murbah had reformed its Labour Party branch on 5Jun43 with Alderman T.S. Prince as foundation President. Tweed Heads dragged the chain and didn’t reform until 27Jan47 with Mr E.B. Steele as President. It took another 50yrs before a short lived Labour MHR got up in the electorate, but even then the Mullum sub division remained firmly conservative. Even so, in this region of social conservatives and economic socialists the Communist Party had a reasonable following. Their annual conference at Grafton in mid 1945 drew 45 delegates from 11 North Coast branches, including the very active branch in the Worker's Republic of Murbah where Mr Anthony was amongst the most vocal anti-Trots. In 1940 a disgruntled banana labourer with communist leanings began writing to The Tweed Daily pointing out that growers were paying their workers only an average of £3 a week when the basic wage was four guineas. They began agitating for a minimum rate of £3/10/- and shortly afterwards the more militant held a meeting at Tweed Heads to form The Australian Banana Workers Union. Not many got employment until the growers found that ‘beggars couldn’t be choosers’ as the war accelerated the manpower shortage. By mid 1942 the Vlismas brothers were advertising for banana labourers at the extraordinary rate of £5 a week. A year later the AWU took up the fight for the banana workers and won them ‘Award Conditions’, setting the minimum adult rate at £4/18/- per 48hr week, or 2/2d per hour, amongst other benefits, prompting an increase in ‘dummying’. At the same time general farm hands (adult male) came onto an Award of £5/1/- for a 56hr week, prompting an increase in share farming and an increase of £2,000,000 in the subsidy to the dairy industry. By this time the dairy farmers were being subsidized to the tune of £6,500,000 per year and were effectively on the dole. By 1944 the subsidy was up to £8,400,000 (despite the Country Party arguing for £14million to bring a halt to the exodus from the industry.) And by late 1944 the banana growers, growing fat on every increasing profits, were offering 3/- an hour for labour, causing outcries from the struggling farmers and others competing for labour. In the election campaign of 1943 Mr Anthony made a point of playing up Labour’s communist connection and dwelt on the fact that the Labour Party had undone all the good work of the previous UAP/UCP Government by lifting the ban on the Communist Party. Mr Curtin was an inconsistent and weak leader dominated by the unions, many of which are communist controlled… After the election, which saw the Curtin Government romp home but the Country Party safely hold Richmond, Mr Anthony was unsuccessfully sued for defamation by an unforgiving commie. Mindful of this, his opponent in the 1946 election conceded ungraciously: It was not necessary in order to win… - and I say this without prejudice in the legal sense - for anyone to spread the wilful and malicious slander naming me as a communist. Mr Anthony’s power and influence increased considerably after this election, which saw him win with the biggest majority of any opposition candidate in Australia. He was an exceptional and experienced campaigner and it was speculated that if he had campaigned outside his electorate, in electorates where the contest was close, the Chifley Government might have lost. Mr Anthony remained strongly anti-communist and was a leading cold war warrior during the 1950s. A few Mullum pranksters, including the odd Greek, even formed a local Communist Party branch in the fifties, but in this conservative stronghold theirs was to Dream the Impossible Dream … as the song goes. It’s doubtful Mr Anthony genuinely perceived these blokes as an electoral threat, but they were very handy for a bit of scaremongering every time an election came around. From mid 1940 when Mr Anthony led the charge over the Italian subversives the Greeks were still relatively immune from overt alien bashing. The Star was effusive during January and February of 1941 after the Greeks had issued their historic OHI!! (No! You shall not pass) and finished driving Musso’s mob back into Albania, inspiring the Australian forces in Africa to push on with their fine efforts. The Tweed Daily on the other hand, had had regular articles singing Greek praises since October 1940. [Greece became the British Commonwealth’s only ally in late 1940. The Duce later rode into Greece on the Fuehrer’s back but after the Italian surrender his soldiers in Greece suffered brutally at the hands of Adolf’s acolytes.] The Greek War Relief Fund was then established in Sydney and branches set up in country towns all over Australia, culminating in Australian Greek Day celebrations on 28Feb1941. Archie Caponas, the organiser in the Mullum district, excelled himself during this period, travelling all over the district galvanising the Patriotic Committee, the Mayor and Council (to whom he donated a Greek flag which was flown alongside the Union Jack and Southern Cross at the chambers), the Girls Patriotic League, the Ladies Patriotic Auxiliary, the RSL (who brought forward their £150 purchase of a complete housie kit), the Voluntary Aid Detachment, the district Red Cross Societies, district Bowls Clubs (both with the assistance of the ebullient Tony Feros of Byron Bay) and every minor organization down to the Boy Scouts. The biggest crowd for some time invaded Mullum on the appointed day and was entertained with housie, woodchop, dance, stalls, various amusements and competitions in Burringbar Street and the Showground. At the gala in the School of Arts that night the various movements in Evson’s Dance were performed with skill and grace by the Greek troupe comprising Mr. and Mrs. A. Caponas, Peter and Nicholas Psaltis, Anthony Feros, Martha Cassis and Mrs. D. Pilikas. A further exhibition was given later in the evening, when the company included several Murwillumbah exponents. The Psaltis brothers were decked out in national costume, as were Mina Caponas and Martha Cassis. Somehow Archie had secured the popular Ritz Orchestra, which drew ‘400 young people’ for a night of hoppin’ and boppin’. Mullum raised £300 (inclusive of £170 raised separately by Arch) for the Greek Appeal – Compared with the effort of a nearby town (some £150) and those of other much larger towns, the result achieved by this town and district is, to say the least, outstanding. Don’t ask. The Main Arm Greeks had earlier and independently contributed £60 to the fund, some giving a week’s wages. The appeal raised more money for the war effort than any other activity in Mullum during the rest of the year. The Mullum Star was back on track a few weeks later however, and subtle in its use of the word ‘alien’, leaving ambiguous whether it was referring to Greeks, Italians, Finns or some other invasive pest in the Mullum banana plantations. At a combined meeting of the Tweed and Brunswick Valley districts of the BGF on 25Mar41 it was stated: When things get back to normal the best part of the banana industry will be controlled by aliens. They are not acquiring small areas, but anything up to 90 acres. A number of speakers voiced their concern, culminating in the Cudgera branch moving to the effect that all aliens, naturalized or otherwise, be prohibited from increasing the acreage of their present areas of banana plantations for the duration of the war and six months after, or, failing that, the Government be asked to deduct 20% of their gross income to help Australia’s war effort. If their plantations were kept down it would be an easier task for us to get reasonable prices and maintain our labour..., the clincher in the unanimous vote for immediate Federal Government action. Cudgera then set in train some heavy stuff when the branch President separately wrote to Mr Anthony, Assistant Minister for Commerce, about aliens making hay while the sun shines…. This was placed on a Federal file, which built as correspondence flowed between Mr Anthony, the Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General, the NSW Government and the Australian Agricultural Council of which Mr Anthony was a member. Mr Anthony wanted tighter controls on land purchase because aliens were putting their money into property instead of into war loans. The Attorney-General advised that the current regulations to control purchase of freehold or leasehold by aliens were quite adequate, but once again asked him to provide specific instances where the tricky aliens were breaking the National Security (Land Transfer) Regulations Act of mid 1940 by dummying.
It took nearly 18mths before Mr Anthony provided
a dubious example by quoting portion of the Premier’s letter to the Prime
Minister asking for help in stabilising the NSW banana industry: A case has
been quoted, that of two Italians named Silvio Martinelli and Angelo Bianchett
who made application for permission to plant fifteen and ten acres respectively.
The application was declined by the Minister for Agriculture, but it is
understood … permission was granted by the Commonwealth authorities for the two
persons named to acquire… a lease … at Terragon …. It all faded away when the glut never eventuated and the NSW Govt advised … that Commonwealth assistance in stabilizing the banana industry is no longer required. …Representations made regarding the application of the National Security (Land Transfer) Regulations to prevent acquisition of land by enemy aliens will not be pressed. So whether Martinelli and Bianchetti were dummying was never pursued, but Silvio managed to score his own National Security file. He and his family moved to Crabbes Creek in 1943.
Mrs Vittoria Martinelli of Uki recalled
for Mary Connery, editor of the Uki history book, that while they were having no
problems when they were growing veggies for the army, when they tried to put in
bananas …They wouldn’t let us plant bananas because we were enemy aliens, so
we put bananas in anyway. It was Mr Priest that helped us out because we had
them days lots of War Certificates. Angelo was naturalized and his brother was
naturalized but still they class us as enemy aliens! But see, me being born in
America, I wasn’t an enemy alien,
so we put bananas in. ……….
[In his appearance at an Australian Agricultural Council meeting in mid 1941 Mr Anthony was asked: How do you differentiate between aliens who came here, say, 40 years ago, and have reared families in Australia, and aliens who have recently arrived? Mr Anthony: There is no differentiation. An enemy alien who came here 60 years ago is still an enemy alien. If he was not born in Australia and wants to acquire property he is regarded as an enemy alien, and must first get the authority of the Attorney-General's Department... But the fully ockerised Italians who were 1yr olds accompanying their parents to New Italy in the 1880s would have been relieved to know that... Difficulties are not placed in his way if he has proved to be a good citizen. ... The proposal now is that we should go further, and prevent aliens from expanding their holdings by taking advantage of the fact that native-born Australians are enlisting.] It appears that all of the 13 leases referred to by the Attorney-General were subsequently approved. A 'friendly alien', Peter Psaltis of Upper Burringbar, was the only non-Italian. Towards the end of the war and into 1946 four more Italians in the Brunswick Valley and five on the Tweed made applications, but whether they were approved is unknown. The Premier’s letter also provided some statistics: As at 31Mar41 there were 281 aliens in NSW growing bananas on 2763 acres; 231 Italians on 2075 acres (mostly in the Richmond district and mainly Terania), 22 Greeks (presumably including the Greek Macedonians) on 387 acres, 11 Finns on 128 acres, 3 Yugoslavs on 24 acres, 2 Syrians on 16 acres, 2 Swedes on 30 acres, 2 Estonians on 23 acres, 2 Russians on 21 acres, 2 Bulgarians on 12 acres, 1 Austrian on 22 acres, 1 Swiss on 12 acres, 1 German on 7 acres and 1 Rumanian on 5 acres. At least 85% of the Italians were in the Richmond district while nearly all the Greeks and Finns were in the Tweed and Brunswick districts. The Rhodian Greeks were classified as Italian. With a total of 2049 commercial growers on 18,598 acres the aliens thus comprised 14% of the growers occupying 11% of the banana land. The Cudgera letter included a clipping from the Northern Star reporting on a meeting on 3Apr41 of the Richmond River Council of the BGF, to which most of the Italians in the region belonged. The Council withdrew its support for the motion that planting licences should be withdrawn from enemy aliens, but their Chairman let the cat out of the bag on the identity of the Brunswick’s mysterious aliens by adding that considerable concern had been felt in the Brunswick area of the position with regard to aliens, other than enemy aliens, who were ‘picking the eyes’ out of the industry. “Where the money is coming from is a bit of a mystery’, he said, “as men are buying who have not ‘a bean’, and it is evident they are dummying for a syndicate….” …as much as £120 per acre had been paid for plantations… “If this sort of thing is allowed to continue the control of the industry will be taken right out of our hands. I cannot see how we can get out of it as at present their country is putting up a wonderful fight… At this time banana statistics were released showing another 1238 acres had been planted out in NSW in the 12mths to 1Apr41, with the Brunswick Valley accounting for almost 50% of the increase. Then followed a flurry of letters to the Northern Star, mainly anti-Italian, until the editor on 30Apr41 decreed that This correspondence is now closed following a letter from Mrs L. Buongiorno pointing out that one of the more rabid writers was an employee of her husband Jack (one of the ‘whitewashed citizens’). This bloke had denied working for an Italian and was urged by ‘Digger’s Wife’ to go work for an Australian. Of course he might receive about £1 per week less wages, but he should not let a thing like that deter him if he is as patriotic as he sounds. Buongiorno, like all aliens, had to pay higher wages than the Australian growers to attract labour. The most comprehensive letter however, came from Joe Vlismas who countered all the arguments with facts and figures, including the silly assertion that aliens were paying the sum of £120 per acre, presumably freehold, for farms given up by enlistees. [Though by mid 1944, with the banana bonanza well under way, leases, with cottage, were changing hands from between £90 and £130 an acre depending on size, location and nature of the cottage.] He covered a lot of stuff, including the fact that the aliens had to pay an average of 1/6d per hour to attract labour while the average Australian grower was paying 1/3d. He also mentioned there were 10 Greek owned plantations, presumably freehold, between Lismore and the border and estimated there were over 300 Australian owned. (- another statistic indicating that banana land was tightly controlled by a privileged few, mainly dairy farmers. A report of early 1940 indicated that these guys had divided up and leased out their farms to 2063 registered growers, including those on 1 acre or less, over the same area.)
Joe got a little carried away and the letter
turned out to be counterproductive . …I would further like to point out to
these Gentlemen that before Aliens are permitted to enter
Australia they must prove themselves to be good
and capable citizens… This does not apply however, to the persons born in
Australia who may be criminals, loafers or otherwise undesirable persons and yet
have the privilege of remaining in the country whether they are prepared to
assist in defending it or bettering its interests or not.
Crikey. He wasn't deported as it seems that the Greeks were still enjoying a bit of immunity with the success of the Greek army against Musso’s mob, prompting the local lot to get a bit uppity and less inclined to accept the alien’s 2nd class citizen status, which in times past had been quietly greeted with both resentment and mirth. Nevertheless, the Greeks continued to be the major concern of the Mullum BGF and RSL at this time, while the Italians and Finns necessarily kept their heads down. Most of the newly arriving Macedonians were assumed to be Greeks. The Sikhs, who lost their official ‘alien’ designation in the late 1920s, had been through the mill 40yrs earlier and learnt how to maintain a low profile. In fact Archie Caponas drafted the letter, but why it came out under Joe’s name can now only be determined through a séance. The previous day, Anzac Day, the same letter under Joe’s name also went to The Mullum Star, but it all came to nawt as the RSL and BGF picked up where they left off and continued their usual weekly paranoid assertions. Postwar Archie got more subtle and changed his approach by joining the Country Party, substantially assisting in the re-election of Mr Anthony on many occasions with money and physical electioneering, and winning Mr Anthony’s personal appreciation with letters of commendation. Mr Anthony may have paid back the help through influencing leading citizens, as there was a dramatic change in attitude to the aliens in 1953, at least publicly. In the meantime, a week after the Richmond BGF meeting and two days after headlines reporting Germany’s invasion of Greece, Archie was front-page news when he was assaulted at his cafe by a couple of high-spirited lads. It seems the motive was revenge by proxy. One said … you ----- Greek, we had a bashing at Murwillumbah from the Greeks and we’re going to have revenge on you Greek------. Arch managed to call the cops, who got there before too much damage was done, prompting one of the boyos to add: I’ll get even with you for this, you ----- Greek ------, you wait. When he got clarity back Arch tried to apply that dubious Greek contrivance, logic, to make sense of the senseless. Two weeks after that Joe Vlismas was also front page news when he was assaulted out at his farm at Main Arm by his employee of a few days, a professional boxer and a monster over 6 feet and weighing in at over 15 stone. It seems the (official) motive was a dispute over pay and compensation for a cut finger. The monster also made the usual disparaging remarks about Greeks but added a personal slur which got up Joe’s nose: ‘You’re the worst class of Greeks I’ve ever met, especially yourself; you are a mug-lair’. Said Joe: ‘I am not a mug-lair, but I’d rather be a mug-lair than a b-------y swaggy like you.’ Oh dear. Then one thing led to another. The Brunswick District was the only BGF Council proposing initiatives to keep the alien riff raff, ostensibly the dreaded Italian form of dago, out of the banana industry, but by the time they got the ear of the Government through Mr Anthony it had been expanded to include all aliens and all primary industry, still all conjecture and without any hard facts: Canberra, Friday (27Jun41): --- The purchase and planting out of land by aliens will be restricted to certain declared districts under a plan the Government intends to put before the Agricultural Conference which began today. The aim will be to prevent aliens from gaining a stranglehold in certain primary industries. Both Commonwealth and State authorities have been told that aliens are buying in in large numbers in various industries, including grape and banana production.
The Agricultural Council duly recommended that
the National Security Regulations be examined to prevent aliens from obtaining
property by subterfuge. Agreement on this action followed discussion of the
degree of alien infiltration into primary industries, particularly the banana
districts of Queensland and
northern New South Wales……… While the Brunswick’s fear of aliens taking over the industry wasn’t pursued by other BGF Councils at this time, at least publicly, the Mullum RSL had more luck. Coffs Harbour RSL also came to the party but was specific in singling out Germans and Italians for the removal of planting permits, while Murbah Sub-Branch included all aliens because the question was a most important one to the North Coast district. The industry was worth preserving for returned soldiers… and after the war there would be a big increase in the number of immigrants from Britain and other colonies who would cause a rise in consumption. In August 1941 it all resulted in a high-powered meeting at Grafton, attended by the NSW and QLD Ministers for Agriculture and other heavies, which finally produced the above figures. The Ministers were informed that 15% of the acreage under bananas in NSW was owned by aliens and that these blokes were responsible for the 66% of new acreage planted out in Richmond in the last year, prompting them to resolve that any further infiltration into the banana industry by enemy aliens… will be controlled by planting permits. However, the Minister was back to the omnibus term ‘alien’ when he spoke on the floor of Parliament …the two States had come to a working arrangement in regard to the infiltration of aliens into the industry. They would have to apply for a permit, and that permit would not be issued to an alien…. It was agreed however, that where an Australian already in the industry might only have two or three acres and might have to increase his acreage to ten to have a living, he would be permitted to increase production to that extent. The inevitable cock-up occurred when the Minister’s bureaucrats got their wires crossed, prompting outrage from Meribah and a resolution to protest against the Department of Agriculture recently refusing to issue permits to British growers to plant bananas. All the scare mongering was due to fears of an imminent glut after the production figures for the year-ended 30Jun41 showed cases produced had finally broken the 1936 record. Prices during the past year have been reasonably good and it has been unofficially estimated that the record output has been worth approximately £750,000 to State banana growers… But … The greatest proportional increase was from the Brunswick district, which rose from 179,409 and 231,506 for 1939 and 1940 respectively to the new high peak of 328,506 cases. The easy solution proposed by the BGF and RSL to eliminate the aliens from the industry wasn’t recognising that the real problem was marketing and quality control, with growers prompted by high prices to send the sweepings from the plantation floor off to market. There were a few sane voices. One, Mr N. S. Kellie McCallum, a farmer of Coorabel Creek and President of the Macadamia Nut Growers Association, was having no truck with alien bashing and wrote a long letter to the local rags on 5Aug41 stating: Any suggestion of overcoming the trouble by interning growers of enemy alien birth and destroying their plantations, because they are growing bananas, is entirely contrary to all sense of British freedom and justice – conditions offered to these aliens when they were invited to enter this country and which we are engaged in war to maintain. He then went on to point out a few home truths on the BGF’s poor marketing skills and control of their industry, the real roots of the problem. On 17Oct41 the BVD Council finally mentioned a specific alien species, or the Star ceased being coy in it’s reporting, when their meeting looked with some anxiety at the increase of Greeks in the industry, publicly giving the finger to the Caponas/Vlismas letters. It was intimated that quite recently two local properties had passed into the hands of men of this nationality, and only a few days ago a grower, desirous of selling his plantation, refrained to do so because the prospective buyer was a Greek. It was feared that if they got a hold, it would not be long before they monopolised the industry. It doesn’t appear to have been pursued, as a month later Thomas Melville Mott of Main Arm was elected President of the Brunswick District Council and thereafter alien bashing was off the agenda of the BGF meetings for a while. In late 1942 Mott and his bolshie mate Gaggin even got a motion up to have the Finns of Main Arm exempt from the planting restrictions applying to enemy aliens. In the meantime some bright spark solved the overproduction problem by talking the army into including bananas in the ration packs of all soldiers in NSW camps, resulting in the disposal of another 1600 cases per week at 16/- a case. This market increased rapidly as the banana eating Americans began appearing on the scene. For the year-ended 30Jun41 the BGF doubled net profit to nearly £12,000 and awarded bonuses to growers of £4900. It was all looking rosy, prompting more into the banana game, particularly at Burringbar where the BGF opened up a new trading center. A little later the BGF, with the assistance of Mr Anthony, had the banana industry reclassified as an ‘essential industry’ giving them access to labour denied to others. In early 1942 panic gripped the district and plans were put in place for a scorched earth policy, the evacuation of all stock and the destruction of all crops, including bananas. Air raid shelters were built everywhere, slit trenches zig zaged all over the place and a mounted guerilla force was formed. And a few leading citizens had great fun terrorizing a handful of bewildered dagoes. As usual the Mullum RSL took the lead in the region and their plans for enemy aliens were first to be reported in the Tweed Daily. At the annual general meeting on 14Feb42 it was resolved that all enemy aliens should be interned forthwith and a petition was sent to Mr Anthony MHR to that effect. They figured that the best place for aliens was behind barbed wire. Earlier they reckoned that In Queensland there were 22,000 un-naturalized Italians…and that many were not of a desirable class and should be kept out (of the banana industry). This time however, they were upstaged by the Twin Towns RSL, supported by many Murbah RSL attendees, who met a couple of days after the Mullum resolution to consider the menace created by enemy aliens. Until this time the Tweed District had been relatively benign in its attitude to aliens, and The Tweed Daily never carried any antidago or wog commentary unless presenting abbreviated reports of some Mullum RSL and BGF meetings. The Murbah and Tweed RSL and BGF meetings were more concerned with the real problem of banana marketing and never considered that the ‘aliens’ could be the culprits. This stance suddenly changed when it dawned that these blokes, initially all aliens, then enemy aliens, then a few Italian banana growers, posed a great threat to the security of the Tweed.
It was moved ‘that we, as returned sailors
and soldiers representing the Northern Rivers of New South Wales and Southern
Queensland sub-branches of the RSS and AILA request the Prime Minister, as head
of the Federal Government, to intern all aliens, irrespective of nationality or
position, well knowing the seriousness of the alien menace in our country at the
present time. We think and demand that the Prime Minister should accede to our
request. … The Murbah branch got an additional motion up: that this combined meeting of sub-branches urge the Federal Government to employ all prisoners of war and internees on rural or national works, instead of allowing them to remain idle in camps..., thus solving the problem of the critical shortage of banana labourers. Somebody must have gotten into their ear as the next day the Tweed Daily carried a correction that the motion …was intended to apply to enemy aliens only and not all aliens as reported in yesterday’s issue. The same day a directive was issued ordering all enemy aliens – Italians, Germans, Bulgarians, Rumanians, Hungarians, Finns and Japs – to report immediately to their local police stations for re-registration, and then to report one day per week thereafter.
Even so, Murbah RSL still considered the broader
alien question: The question arose whether the request to the Government
should be confined to enemy aliens, or should include all aliens.
The Mayor of the Murbah Municipality and the
President of the Tweed Shire then entered the fray and called a public meeting
at which 40 men, 3 women and a dog attended. They eventually got two motions up
in the much the same wording as the RSL's. A committee was formed with the
sole object of securing throughout the Tweed District that unanimous support
which this meeting is confident it would obtain.
Next day 16 of the 750 eligible parents attended
the Murbah High School P&C meeting and passed a motion supporting the actions of
the RSL and the Civic group. Coincidentally the motion was foisted on them by
the Mayor and seconded by the President of the RSL, also President of the P and
C. The Headmaster, Mr A.L. Nairn, opposed the motion and said he deprecated
the subject being brought before the meeting, contending that neither the school
nor the P and C was concerned with the subject… and pointed out that some
of the aliens were friendly. The next day the Mayor refined the same argument in getting the Council to pass the motion;……… if these aliens were friendly they would be naturalized… and thought that the Japanese would like to find an army of 20,000 to 30,000 aliens hostile to Australia, ‘armed to the teeth’ and ready to help the invaders in their fight. The assertions, hyperbole and twisted logic kept on growing and Queensland continued to be used as an example despite rubbery figures published in the Tweed Daily on 7Feb42 informing the locals that the number of enemy aliens in QLD was 7,500 naturalised and 3,800 unnaturalised, excluding internees – 90% of whom were Italians. [The Ingham district with a large Italian population held the record as the largest contributor to war bonds in Australia.] Apart from the mention of 285 aliens engaged in the NSW banana industry, mostly Italians around Lismore, no figures were ever presented on the total number of aliens or enemy aliens in the Tweed district likely to be armed to the teeth and securing the beachhead for the Japanese invasion. The police had these figures and knew who was where and which ones had armament stockpiles, but chose not to intervene. They were probably miffed that nobody believed the Officer-in-Charge of the Murbah Police District who, 18mths earlier, had publicly stated that The Italian population in the Murwillumbah police district is very small and is practically confined to district banana plantations. No disturbances of any kind have been made. There were about 10 Italian families at most around the Tweed and about the same in the Brunswick Valley, including the area up to Burringbar, so why Murbah’s worthies suffered a collective rush of blood to the head is baffling. Nowhere else on the North Coast, not even in the Lismore district where most of the region's dagoes resided, did knickers get in such a twist. Two days later ‘The Tweed River Branch of the New South Wales Cane Growers’ Association’ passed the resolution with the reasoning that … the enemy aliens realised that they enjoyed privileges that enemy aliens did not enjoy in other countries, and that they expected internment. That same day Mr Anthony MHR made a speech in the house blaming Prime Minister Curtin and his Government for the climate of fear gripping the country. Ten days later he was in Murbah adding to the fear: ‘In my opinion there will, without doubt, be an attack on Australia.’ At a public meeting he called for all retailers to close their shops for half a day each day so employees could receive military training, and then began touring all the larger towns with this proposal. The Murbah retailers tried it for a week or so on a voluntary basis then changed it to a one day a week event, but within a month the whole scheme had collapsed. Meanwhile the Murbah branch of the Federated Municipal and Shire Council Employees Union caved in to their elected councillors and agreed to write to Mr Curtin requesting internment of all enemy aliens. A couple of days later the Tweed District Council of the Primary Producers Union fell into line. At the same time too the Murwillumbah Retail Traders Association jumped on the bandwagon as did Murbah Rotary, albeit with a slight modification of the resolution: That the Federal Government be requested to intern all unnaturalised enemy aliens and to employ them in work in accordance with international code. Then followed the Cudgen and Condong Progress Associations resolutions after an address by the Mayor. Eungella Parents and Citizens’ Association also held public meetings to endorse the stand, as did the Burringbar RSL and others until almost every micky mouse organisation on the Tweed took up the chant.
The Twin Towns RSL galvanised the Coolangatta
Town Council and the Tweed Heads Urban Committee to pass the resolution. …
people belonging to the Axis powers were living in comparative luxury within our
shores. Even in internment camps they did little except keep fit on tennis
courts, provided, no doubt, by ‘dinkum Aussies’. … Mr F. W. Stuart JP, Chairman of the Internment of Aliens Committee at Murwillumbah, the local auctioneer and failed political aspirant, then addressed a gathering. He criticized the State and Federal Governments for allowing such a great influx of aliens into the country and the people for supporting them. In 1939, when the ban on assisted passages for immigrants had lifted, 10,993 came into Australia, of which only 881 were British. In the same year, a greater number of Britishers left the country. If there had been no war Australia would have been conquered by peaceful penetration.… Thousands of German Jews had come into Australia as refugees, posing as victims of the Nazi rule. They, in his opinion, were mainly fifth columnists. Italians had taken charge of the fish and fruit markets in Sydney and were in great force in the banana industry.
A few days later Mr Stuart called an open-air
meeting on Broadway where the guest of honour was Mr Herbert Yeats MLA, Member
for Toowoomba, who took the opportunity to castigate Prime Minister Curtin for
telling the Americans that we had no enemy within our gates in this country.
The meeting passed the usual resolution demanding that the enemy aliens be
interned and put to work of national importance, but also got up a
resolution asking for a National Government and an all-in war effort, which
was probably the hidden agenda. All the usual was stated by a number of speakers
with Mr Yeats adding … He had been there (North Queensland) and had
seen them gather and had heard them talk in their own language. That was a
scandalous position. Some were naturalized, but the speaker had little reliance
on naturalization. Often enough it was a business proposition to enable the
foreigner to get more out of the
British Empire. He would not trust many of them. ‘Put them all behind barbed
wire out in Central Australia where they can do no harm’ urged Mr Yeats. And finally it got loud enough to reach the ears of Mr Arty Fadden MHR, Leader of the Opposition, who made a speech in the house calling for immediate action to intern all enemy aliens, but Prime Minister Curtin stuck to his guns, deciding the current regulations were adequate to keep an eye on the subversive dagoes. And then everyone went and had a cold shower, a cuppa tea, a bex and a good lie down, and all the heightened agitation settled back to normal levels, but they never caught the comedians who put the hallucinogenic stuff in the Murbah water supply. In the meantime that exceptional Australian, Gino Pagura of Goonengerry, was fined one quid for use of ‘insulting words’ when he said to a bumptious army Lieutenant at Mullum ‘I am a better Australian than you’. [And also in the meantime, the 'dago alert' issued by the Murbah Municipal Council and the Tweed Shire Council continued to generate calls for interment from many other Local Government Areas around the State. The two Councils had written to all State LGAs in early March seeking support for their internment resolution ...It was further decided to circularise ...all Councils... in the State to urge that they give their co-operation in this matter by taking action along the lines suggested and by organizing meetings of public, semi-public and patriotic bodies in their districts to give the movement their whole-hearted support and to ask their Federal Representatives to also support any action that may be taken... (see under 'Undesirable Aliens' in 'References'.)] Labour continued to disappear into the services despite the growers offering the extraordinary bribe of £5 per week and, at least in Mr Anthony’s case, free accommodation. They compensated by cutting back on acreage, which fell by 1288 acres over the 1941/42 season while the number of commercial growers dropped only marginally to 2036, but, remarkably, these blokes achieved an all time production record of 1,411,221 cases, which still did not meet demand, giving them a very nice return for the season. Delivering the results at the AGM the Chairman stated Today growers are enjoying a prosperity unequalled in the industry’s history in NSW. The enemy aliens however, missed out on the bonanza as none were given planting permits during the season. By 1Apr43 acreage had fallen by another 1274 acres to just under 16,000, with only 21 new growers given keys to the treasure chest. Again remarkably, and despite the continued whingeing over lack of labour, and in spite of the under-contributing enemy aliens, NSW production to 30Jun43 had fallen by only 7%, guaranteeing the run of wonderful returns. The fall was attributed to a critical shortage of cases, which left many growers angry over BGF mismanagement, and in searching around for scapegoats alleged that in one district an Italian grower had 1400 cases stowed away, while there was not another grower who had more than 14… and alleged that four trucks of case timber came into the district (Main Arm), three of which were for alien growers. … alien growers had no loyalty to the Federation and if not stopped they would have a large portion of the fruit on the market. … it was wrong for thousands of cases to go into sheds to be ‘frozen’ when they should be distributed… To add injury to insult, a little later Guido Verado of Uki, later of Billinudgel, was fined £20 plus costs for failing to furnish income tax returns. He had been in Australia for 5yrs and pleaded that he was making very little money and did not realise he had to furnish returns. The Tax Department said you can’t fool us because ‘We know that these banana growers make good profits.’ By early 1944 the BGF itself was the biggest hoarder of cases with £10,000 worth tucked away. They were squeezing the sawmillers something fierce and were the direct cause of the millers going on strike for better prices, prompting the Prices Commission to step in a few months later and fix the retail price at 1/11d per case. For the 1943/44 year the NSW banana industry generated over £2,000,000, only £125,000 of which went to the millers. [Demand for timber continued to be so enormous that a few years later, during the glut of 1948/49 which generated a demand for over 2,000,000 cases, the Cook Bros were prompted to try and access the millions of super feet of millable timber at Blue Knob, Gooninbar State Forest, near Kunghur. Their erection of this extraordinary flying fox with 1½-inch diameter cables was a laudable engineering feat and hailed throughout the state, and blessed by Mr Anthony MHR in front of crowds from all over the region.] Shortly after the case debacle planting restrictions were imposed on all growers by the Department of Agriculture because the shortage of manpower was causing neglectful or bad growers to risk the spread of disease by not destroying old unproductive plantations upon replanting new acreage. The restrictions were based on the premise that five acres was the limit one man could look after, with 12 acres for two men, 24 acres for three and 40 for four men…. When a grower’s wife or daughter helped in packing and other shed work this would be taken into consideration; a grower in such circumstances would get a permit for eight acres. No permits for new acreage would be given where the subjective assessment of the inspector indicated a man was a naughty grower. Nevertheless, the Department’s Special Fruit Instructor at Murbah told the Tweed District Council at a meeting in mid 1943 ‘We want all the bananas you can produce’…’There is going to be a big shortage of bananas this year and next year… and more naughty growers went and broke the rules. These naughty growers had caused an increase in bunchy top disease, but at the AGM in late 1943 the BGF was able to report that it was now under control and that the industry had been materially assisted through the work of a number of aliens in digging out abandoned or neglected plantations. It was Mr Anthony’s personal efforts (that) secured labourers for the chipping and cleaning up of ‘abandoned, neglected or diseased plantations’…. At this time the Tweed sugar industry also got alien labour, including 40 ‘Abos’ from Brewarrina, to overcome the shortage of cane cutters. By 1944 the control of bunchy top was costing the BGF £6000 per year, funded by a levy of 3½d per case on growers. And the Councils were complaining that they couldn’t get labour for essential maintenance because it was impossible to compete with the wages being paid by banana growers. ‘The swing of the pendulum,’ was the description applied by Cr J.C. Priest at Tweed Shire Council meeting yesterday to the overwhelming competition nowadays presented by the high wages paid in the banana industry to the labour pool from which the council normally would obtain many of its road workers. A few years ago Cr Priest said, the shire council’s wages were definitely the best offering. Banana growers then were paying only 1/- an hour. Some were paying only 10d said Cr C.E. Cox… By late 1944 the President of the BGF was exhorting members to stop driving up costs by offering more remunerative work to the members of our disease control gangs. Competition for labour was still a bone of contention for the Tweed Shire Council through 1945 with Cr Boyd, himself a banana grower, stating banana growers were seeking boys 14 to 18 years of age from dairy farms…at 3/- an hour. By early 1944 the continuing banana drought was giving the growers a staggering return of £4 a case, but the flow-on had caused the retail price of bananas in Sydney to jump to 4d each – twice the price of The Tweed Daily. It was all getting out of hand and mid year the Prices Commission stepped in and fixed prices. The BGF lamented that Prices to growers would be somewhat less than those prevailing at present, and were less than was hoped for, but should be profitable. The chairman, Roy Armstrong, was happy enough because the high prices had introduced a speculative element into the industry, which in the past has meant periodic disaster. However, despite the price fixing returns averaged around £3 a case during the remainder of the year, prompting the Prices Commission to again intervene and again drop the fixed wholesale rate. A protest delegation lead by Mr Anthony and Mr Armstrong descended on Sydney but got no joy. The Commissioner had done his homework and amongst other things presented clippings from the Tweed Daily showing growers had the wherewithal to drive up labour costs by offering 3/- an hour. Demand remained huge and the inevitable black market arose. Non-BGF accredited agents from the markets and other entrepreneurs bypassed the BGF and approached the growers directly, offering higher prices than the fixed rate. The naughty growers couldn’t resist the temptation. Sir Earl Page on behalf of the Coffs Harbour growers had more luck than Mr Anthony and had the original ceiling price restored by mid 1945, but into 1946 the BGF was still complaining over the black-marketing of bananas. And in early 1947 the NSW Fruit Shopkeepers Association went militant and boycotted the city markets when they found themselves paying a black-market price of 46/- a case when price controls dictated a ceiling price of 36/- a case. For the year ended 31Mar44 total acreage under bananas in NSW had only dropped marginally to 15,933 acres, but with the number of commercial growers rising by 63 to 2119, over half of whom were on the Tweed and Bruns. Once again the Bruns had the biggest increase of both growers and new acreage and was now just 360 acres behind the Tweed as the leader of the band. Despite their best efforts however, production for the year ending 30Jun44 came in at 931,788 cases, a massive decrease of 362,507 on the previous year, and everyone cried all the way to the bank to deposit the collective return of over £2m. Returned soldiers then charged from the trenches and by the year-ended 31Mar45 18,238 acres had been planted out by 2564 commercial growers. And a year later 21,663 acres had been captured by 3177 determined growers, generating 1,347,993 cases but still earning a very nice return of an average of 35/- a case. Despite the huge increase in acreage and growers, acts-of-god in the form of the 1946 drought, the worst in 65 years, followed by record flooding in early 1947, kept potential production down and maintained the champagne lifestyle. For the year ended 30Jun47 the 2102 commercial growers in the Tweed-Brunswick district produced 763,232 ‘new-type cases’ (~637,000x1.5 bushell ‘tropical cases’) off 14,165 acres and scored an average return of 30/- a case, generating an income of £1,144,848, greater than the combined income of the local dairying industry (£833,000 with subsidy), Pig-raising (£200,000) and cane-growing (£100,000). The following year bananas became the principal crop by far throughout the whole Richmond-Tweed region, exceeding maize (~16,000 acres) and sugar cane (~12,000 acres). Wholesale price controls were lifted in mid 1947 because the Minister finally figured that within the next few years supplies would be adequate to meet all requirements…. The average wholesale price at the Sydney markets then promptly jumped to 50/- a case, leading to more angry clashes with the retailers who were still restricted to a margin of 1¾ d. per lb. Over in Perth the wholesale price hit an extraordinary 182/- per case, leading to a retail price of 9d per banana and motivating the BGF to fast track its establishment of a WA outlet by the imposition of a 3d. per case levy on growers, despite the attempts of the Melbourne merchants to frustrate its efforts to supply bananas to Perth. In Brisbane the agents voluntarily agreed to a ceiling of 1/- a lb wholesale, which even so was still the highest price in 20yrs. This was the last of the good times as shortly afterwards production from the huge increase in plantations came on stream, in addition to the growers immediately flooding the market with poor quality fruit to take advantage of the prices. Two months later they were achieving the lowest prices for a number of years, and by early 1948 thousands of unsaleable cases were being left to rot on the rail platform in Sydney. While the average price fell to as low as 2/- a case, and retailers were flogging the things at 2d./lb or 5 for 1/-, in many cases there was no cheque at all for extended periods. And it got worse – a year later a Terranora grower was happy to receive a cheque for 7/9d for a consignment of 34 cases (~2½d a case) after getting nothing for a few months. Queensland had also caught the banana bug, planting like there was no tomorrow, with their rate of growth starting to surpass that of the Northern Rivers. For the 1946/47 season they planted out 2808 new acres to reach a total of 13,696 acres under production, a lot on the coastal belt between the border and Brisbane. NSW production had surpassed Queensland’s in 1938 and by the end of the war accounted for 60% of the nation’s bananas, but the combined Northern NSW and South East Queensland production almost totally dominated the market. Prior to the 1948 glut 75% of the South East Queensland crop was marketed through Brisbane, but in that dreadful year 50% from the area up to West Burleigh went to southern markets to join the NSW production, presenting the southerners with almost 2million cases to chew their way through. The Murbah Chamber of Commerce also folded that year, but 2yrs later they realized it wasn’t the end of the world and reformed with 60 members. The Byron Bay Chamber also reformed in 1950. The area under cultivation in NSW reached an all time high of 30,118 acres in 1948 and thereafter the law of the jungle, or market forces for the rationalists, took over, with frequent gluts forcing many of the 4656 growers out of the business very quickly and making new growers wary of joining the fittest survivors for some time. The market was thus again stabilized and the boom and bust cycle was such that the 1948 record wasn’t broken for another seven years. Except for the Cassianos Bros who moved to Lismore all Greeks seem to have ridden it out. The ‘aliens’, from ‘Balts’ to ‘Dagoes’, but most of whom were Greeks and Macedonians, made up about 4% of the Mullum district population at this time but composed about 12% of the banana growers.
As early as 1942 the Tweed District Council had
discussed cutting the enemy aliens out of the BGF, if not out of industry
entirely, but figured the Government might get upset over having to take over
the responsibility for the plantations. Contradicting the earlier assertions,
… there were very few alien growers who owned their land, and where aliens on
Crown land were taken off their plantations the Crown Department that owned the
land would be called on to do the job… In late 1942, with the huge demand for bananas continuing to outstrip supply, there was much concern amongst banana growers … when it was rumoured that it was proposed to lift the restrictions placed on the future plantings of bananas by aliens. The BGF sent off strong protests and considerable relief was felt when it was learned later that the Minister for Agriculture was insistent that the restrictions shall not be lifted under any circumstances. A month later the Tweed Council of the BGF sent a letter of appreciation to the Minister and at the same time asked him to intervene with the Minister for Labour to make internee labour available for the banana industry. Unfortunately, at this time there was little prospect of internees working outside camps as farm labourers due to the lack of guards. Any such labour had to be voluntary anyway as the Government was still adhering to international conventions against compelling internees to work, but on 4May43 the Tweed Daily reported that 11 men, supplied by the Allied Works Council, had arrived at Murbah to work on North Coast banana farms, without any comment of nationality.
While the heightened agitation over aliens faded
away in the general populace, the Murbah RSL carried on the scaremongering. At a
meeting on 19Jan43 they released a letter-to-the-press alleging deception by
aliens on the North Coast to
obtain additional land for planting bananas. By mid 1944 the Tweed District Council of RSL sub branches was including black marketeers and homegrown speculators along with the aliens as the main culprits in underhand transfers of land. They reckoned that £100,000 had been horded in notes in Murwillumbah and the Tweed district …. by undisclosed war time profits …and that …as soon as wartime controls were lifted the hoarders would speculate in land and property…. They wrote to the Minister for Lands to refuse consent to the sale and transfer of land… with the object of preventing speculators and aliens from obtaining land that should be available for the settlement of returned soldiers…. The council’s letter alleged that several transfers had been made on the Tweed which had created much resentment locally, particularly where some of the best bananas and farming properties had passed into the hands of ‘speculators and aliens’. The letter alleged that speculators and aliens were able to carry on freely with the usual farming or fruit-growing, and obtain an exemption from service through being in a reserved occupation. It was felt, the letter added, that dummying had been practiced in recent land transfers on the North Coast, but it was impossible to secure sufficient evidence. As with previous cases the Minister asked them to give specific examples so they wrote off to all the other RSL branches to help out, but as usual nothing eventuated. They were still at it 12mths later. The Tweed Council increased its influence in late 1946 when its umbrella organisation swallowed the Brunswick sub-branches and became the Tweed-Brunswick District Council. They began putting their noses into all sorts of troughs and it was they rather than the BGF who initiated the move to keep big syndicates out of the banana industry by limiting the acreage of each individual to 15, with each man to be personally and financially interested in his plantation. The proposal was put by the Minister for Agriculture to the Australian Agricultural Council, but was turned down.
For some reason the Alien Virus became
particularly virulent in the Richmond district in late 1943 with more cries to
quarantine the infectious dagoes. The Richmond Council of the BGF did its best
to ensure they never got the money to buy arms by continuing to lock them out of
the organization and the lucrative banana industry. “I think it is wrong that
we should have aliens here at our meetings ruling the destinies of our
organization…. These Italians are waxing wealthy through being able to carry on
their business without any restrictions. They are a clannish crowd and are
making money, and we have to put up with a great deal of hardship. And in case any money did get through, particularly to the large guerrilla force at Nimbin, a couple of entrepreneurial policemen found a cunning way to mop it up. In return for donations to the Australian Comforts Fund, aka The Nimbin Police Retirement Fund, the Italians were advised that grateful authorities would look favourably upon exemptions from interning and call-up for the Civil Construction Corps. Unfortunately the ungrateful authorities didn’t appreciate their initiative and presented the good Constables with 18mths in the clink rather than an award for diligence. The Lismore RSL was doing its bit also and resolved That after the war all unnaturalised aliens of Axis countries and sympathisers during this war must leave the country at a given date; that no nationals of Axis countries, or sympathisers, be allowed to enter the Commonwealth for 20 years; that all Italian schools be closed; and that all Italian newspapers be suppressed. The motion was carried. … If you want preferential treatment in Australia you have to be an enemy alien. …If I had anything to do with it, I would naturalize them all by sending them back to their own country…There were still people with no roof over their head or bails for their cattle (in the Tuntable district after a violent storm) …but Italian banana growers with humpies were taking enough iron to cover a dozen houses… By late 1944 the Bruns was the only district carrying on the feud over the alien growers. An RSL meeting on 19Oct44 moved ‘that the lease or purchase of land be withheld from naturalized enemy aliens while Australian soldiers remained unsettled’, the same old beef they had been pursuing ever since the war started, but repeated each time new members joined, or a new committee elected or banana prices dropped. This motion wasn’t good enough for the new Vice President, who had learnt his script during the earlier Mullum sports of Chinese Chasing and Hindoo Hounding: Speaking on the motion he said it was a peculiar thing that while aliens, whether enemy or otherwise, appeared to experience little difficulty in the acquisition of land, ex-servicemen encountered many obstacles in their efforts towards this end. He forecast that at the present rate of alien infiltration into North Coast areas, it would not be long before these people established their own communities, together with their own shops, papers, schools, etc in our midst as had been done in other parts of the Commonwealth. If the Government was not prepared to take productive steps towards containing this insidious menace, it was likely that returned soldiers who were deprived of their heritage through the machinations of these unwanted and undesirable migrants would deal with the matter in their own undiplomatic but entirely efficient fashion …’ He had to be reined in by the President, Police Sgt George D. Taylor, who served in that position from 1942 to 1947. The Vice President was off serving somewhere with the Rail Unit during previous discussions of this matter and nobody bothered to point out that the RSL was already onto those cunning Ithacans employing the tactic of the Trojan Horse. Every Greek had to make application to the Federal Government for the lease or purchase of land and had to wait many months for a determination. That some of those whose applications were rejected then resorted to ‘dummying’ was possibly true, but only one dubious alien case ever came close to prosecution despite the ever-vigilant RSL. Arthur Caldwell MHR reached out to him in a speech a few months later ...The Australian people must help people become assimilated… We have been too prone in the past to ostracise those of alien birth and then blame them for segregating themselves and forming foreign communities…. [The unreconstructed Vice President had learnt entertaining oratory back in the ‘alien election’ of 1925 when he ran for Labour for the State seat of Byron. In addressing a rally from the back of a truck in Burringbar Street He made reference to the influx of foreigners to the country and said if the same benefits were extended to Australians as to foreigners he would own his own farm… It was next to impossible at present for an Australian to get a block of land, yet people from the South of Europe can come into the country and not only get land but £1000 too. … The foreign influx was detrimental to Australia. They should do what America does and put up a quota, and make all immigrants pass an education test… He ran second last in the field of 11 candidates, inclusive of Mr Informal. Mr W. T. Missingham (Progressive Party) romped home and his surplus and 2nd preferences dragged Mr F. W. Stuart, later Chairman of the Murbah Internment of Aliens Committee, across the line. Even as a youngster the budding politician and RSL Vice Pres had been to the fore in taking up community concerns. In 1907, aged 18 and loaded up with rifles and ammunition, he wandered off from the family farm at Main Arm to do a spot of bushranging and ‘John’ harassing. Unfortunately the police didn’t appreciate his motives and had him ‘arraigned on a charge of being of unsound mind’. He was discharged into the care of his mother and later rejected for WW1 service. He became the brother-in-law of an Ithacan in 1932, was elected to the Mullum Municipal Council in 1945 and by late 1958 had a gig as deputy mayor.] An article in The Mullumbimby Star of 14Dec44, headlined Greek Preference in Banana Industry, again reported the goings on at the Mullum RSL sub branch where they debated the alleged preference being given to Greek banana growers in the allocation of POW labour. One bloke said it was …a rotten state of affairs when a Greek or any other alien was given preference over an Australian, especially one who has served and urged that they instruct the State Branch to press for an immediate inquiry. [The Tweed Daily also reported the meeting, but as usual confused everybody by substituting ‘Greek’ for ‘alien’ and prefacing the report with the word ‘alleged’. Those many with their Australian and Greek born sons and brothers in the Australian forces must have been bemused.] While the Mullum RSL only ever had a maximum membership of 41 during the early war years, with their meetings attracting a max of only 14 members, their lobbying potential was significant through their Patron, the local MHR Larry Anthony. Mr Stephens MLA took over the patronage of the RSL after the war. By mid 1944 all RSL sub branches were growing rapidly as the rate of discharge of soldiers increased, enabling them to start exercising some serious political clout. The Italian POWs had started to arrive in the Tweed-Brunswick district through 1944 and by the end of the year 200 had been allotted out, with outstanding applications by local growers and farmers exceeding 300. There was much jealousy over the lucky 96 farmers and planters who had got in early. Over 50% were employed on banana plantations and once again a few naughty growers were sprung breaking the rules in using them to plant up new acreage. Murbah RSL was also alleging that farmers and growers were using the POWs for private gain and sacking Australian labourers to save on costs. The DWAC found three cases and removed the POWs from the culprit farmers, all Australian. The Government tried to curtail the rorts by doubling the price of POW labour to £2 per week in early 1945. At the same time the Government finally caved in to the demands from the dairy industry, which was in dire straits with many farms having gone out of production since the war started, including 20 at Mooball. In mid 1944 it was announced that 4000 soldiers would be progressively released for dairying and shortly afterwards the first batch of 151 arrived. But they sniffed the wind and saw which way the money was blowing. The DWAC was upset that only a small percentage of the men released from the Army for dairying in the Tweed and Brunswick districts were actually engaged in dairying; most of them were working on bananas…. For some peculiar reason, the first time ever, the BGF didn’t release the official returns for the 1945 season at the AGM. But they were still substantial as indicated by Mr Stephens’ faux pas on the floor of Parliament in late 1945 during a speech calling for 10,000 acres of banana land in the Tweed-Brunswick district to be set aside as soldier settlement blocks. …an outlay of £300 to £500 would set up a man on a living area of 10 acres. …Tweed growers had received an aggregate cheque for £1,115,000 during the past 12 months…. Men in the banana industry had spoken a few untruths over the past few years to prevent the anticipated influx of soldier settlers in the field, he added. The BGF went ballistic … The actual figures were 290,000 cases for a gross return of, at the most, £600,000, … There might be a few men who were antagonistic to the entry of returned soldiers into the industry, but this did not apply to those in charge of it. A couple of weeks earlier Murbah RSL had said the Tweed – without the Brunswick – was producing bananas worth £650,000 a year. Mr Stephens quickly ate humble pie, pleading that he was misreported and that he was referring to the combined Tweed and Bruns and never at any time said that the BGF had tried to keep soldiers out. In a very short time the returned soldiers started flooding into the banana industry, without having to take up arms, doubling the acreage under cultivation to an all time high within three years and causing the abrupt end of the gold rush. By late 1944 banana leases, with a ‘cottage’, were changing hands from between £90 and £120 an acre depending on size, location and nature of the cottage. One discharged soldier was amazed to learn that the 12ac plantation he sold for £350 was worth £2000 within 12mths of his enlistment, but he could now pick up a 150-acre freehold dairy farm, with house, plant, sheds and stock, for the same price. By late 1945 a 7ac banana lease with 2 sheds and a cottage was going for £1150 at Mullum while a 136ac freehold dairy farm could be had for £1200. Soldier settlers were either given no or low interest loans, and grants, to establish themselves. The BGF and the various local RSL clubs had made a submission to Mr Graham, Minister for Agriculture, through Mr Anthony MHR, in mid 1945 asking for 3000 acres to be set aside for Returned Soldiers. By the close of 1948 £30,000 had been spent on soldier rehabilitation in the Brunswick Valley. Apart from the glut shake out of 1948/49, good economic conditions returned quickly and by early 1951 all loans for the purchase of stock, plant and equipment had been repaid. Full employment meant that banana growers had to throw in free rent in a house in town as an incentive when advertising for workers. Even the Psaltis Bros at the Popular Café were using ‘free accommodation’ in their adverts to attract waitresses. In the meantime the alien land grabbers were again under attack at another Mullum RSL meeting on 8Feb45. The Vice President repeated his rant in much the same words, again using the phrase ‘all aliens, whether enemy or otherwise’, but added: It would be a tragedy, he went on, if after going to Africa and belting the compatriots of these people until they were glad to find surcease from their woes within the wire confines of the prisoner of war camps, our men were to find, on their return, that blood brothers of their late enemies were in possession of the best of the land they had fought and bled to protect… To prove his assertion, he instanced the fact that three farms in the Billinudgel district had recently been sold to aliens. His future Council mate backed him up with …a case where an alien had been given preference over Australians in securing prisoner of war labour to ’plant up’ bananas … the particular alien to whom he referred had gone first of all to a prominent departmental official in Murwillumbah with a request that he be granted a permit to obtain the labour. While seated in the official’s office …this alien had shown the official a sheet of blotting paper on which the figures 100 were written. He then indicated that if the permit were forthcoming, he would be quite prepared to place the £ sign in front of these figures and translate them to a cheque which would be made out to his hearer. The immediate result of these approaches however, … had been that the alien had been thrown out of the office by the indignant occupant. Most other people would have been deterred by such a reception, … but not the alien. That gentleman had merely gone over the head of the official to someone in Sydney, and had returned armed with the authority for him to obtain the POW labour. The meeting swallowed the no-names-no-pack drill assertions and finally decided on two motions; that a letter be written to the Minister of Agriculture requesting a statement on the (latter) matter and that the matter of the Billinudgel land sales be brought under the notice of the repatriation officials. On the very same day the Chairman of the BGF reported back on his unsuccessful meeting with the Prices Commission and happened to mention that there were now 400 fewer aliens in the industry than there were five years ago. Go figure. (Maybe he meant the aliens occupied '400 fewer acres'?) But Mr Anthony again took up their concern in mid 1945: The steady penetration of aliens into the real estate market was a matter for immediate Government action, Mr H.L. Anthony MHR said today (11Jul45). The best farms in many districts were falling into alien hands, despite pressure by returned soldiers’ organizations…As happened on various earlier occasions, he was again asked to put up: All property transactions of aliens, including friendly aliens and allies, were carefully checked said officers of the Attorney Generals’ Department today. All purchases … were recorded. They were approved only after careful examination by the Capital Issues Board. It is understood that allegations by Mr H.L. Anthony (CP, NSW) that valuable city and country properties are being purchased ‘under the lap’ by aliens will be investigated if particular instances can be supplied. Despite the Attorney General’s public reassurance the scare mongering continued, prompting the Chairman (Mr Roy Armstrong) to again hose people down: All this talk about aliens taking over the banana industry during the war is hooey…. He said that aliens of enemy origin had 500 fewer acres of bananas now than they had at the start of the war. It is we who are planting up bananas, and at the rate we are going there will be no room left for the returned men …the present mad rush of planting bananas was pointing to another disastrous glut … businessmen were not getting into the banana industry as they did before the last glut, when they were severely bitten, but cane growers were digging out their cane and planting bananas. They had dug out 300 acres of cane on the lower rivers and planted bananas. Dairyfarmers are selling out going concerns, which in some cases have taken them years to build up, and planting bananas, he went on…. He also had a swipe at the land speculators. It didn’t help that Norco announced a month later that it was going to close six factories, including those at Uki and Tyalgum, leaving a heap of dairy suppliers with nowhere to go but into the banana industry. Despite Mr Armstrong’s warnings people believed what they wanted to believe and shortly afterwards the RSL alleged today that discharged soldiers who held banana leases before the war were walking the streets in their home towns in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales because they could not afford to pay the prices demanded by some Italians for their properties…
That got the ear of Mr Harrison MHR, deputy
leader of the Federal Opposition, who used the Mullum RSL script to work in
‘other aliens’ when he addressed parliament with bitter criticism of the
system which permitted Italians to dominate the banana growing industry in
certain North Coast areas…. It was a sad commentary on the Government’s idea of
the fitness of things to see the nationals of the country which was the United
Nations’ most cowardly and treacherous foe during the war, now comfortably and
arrogantly settled on our most productive farming areas while their Australian
conquerors could not obtain a yard to call their own…. While the Government made
futile references about plans to resume land for the benefit of the
ex-serviceman, the best of it was literally held to ransom by Italians and other
aliens. There was nothing whatever to prevent the Government from announcing
legislation making it impossible for alien syndicates to acquire land with a
view to settling their compatriots thereon…. He added that reports from Lismore
and other North Coast servicemen
who had held banana leases before the war were prevented from renewing them
because of the capacity of the Italians who now owned the blocks. Roy Armstrong threw his hands up after that, but Mullum RSL continued to have a swipe at anonymous aliens. At a meeting in early 1946 to discuss provision of land for returned soldiers they raised the question of local holdings being purchased by aliens and instanced two cases, one of which had already been finalised, and the other, he understood, was pending…and off they went again. Thereafter however, alien scapegoating faded away as the BGF drowned in a sea of bananas and the RSL, despite a few distractions, went off in hot pursuit of communists. Murbah’s reaction to communists was one of the strongest on the north coast. In mid 1949 the RSL, under the leadership of The Rev R.L. Edwards, decided to hold an ‘anti-communist month’ from 4Aug to 3Sep and to form an ‘Anti-Communist Vigilance Corps’. The campaign kicked off with a public meeting which attracted 1500 people, armed with bags of rotten tomatoes and other appropriate ammunition in readiness for any attempt by communists to make a scene. The whole town shut down over lunch hour for this gig and was swelled by an influx of country people. Unfortunately no commie was game enough to show his face and the ammo had to be taken home until next time. Next time happened towards the end of the year during the election campaign that saw Mr Menzies start his dream run. A very game communist candidate for the Senate came to town but was greeted with jeers, motorcar horns, ironical cheers, counting out, broadcast tunes and interjections that made the task impossible. A crowd of many hundreds watched from a distance … to be safe from flying tomatoes…. As the tomatoes had been exhausted, some having found their mark, and a few eggs had been prepared, the candidate apparently thought discretion the better part of valour and retired from the scene. The fact that he was a returned soldier didn’t help him one bit, as returned servicemen formed part of the ‘deputation’ which ‘closed’ the proceedings… and a number of returned men remained in the vicinity with the expressed object of ensuring that the speaker did not return. One of the RSL distractions from the red obsession occurred at a conference of the Far North Coast Council of sub-branches in late 1947 when it was resolved that all aliens who were not naturalized be called up for examination, and any alien who could not speak the English language be deported to his own country. The resolution also urged, that all naturalized aliens be made to swear that they would refrain from speaking in their old language in public places… if they allowed the indiscriminate immigration of aliens the least they should demand was that these people become assimilated with the Australian way of life and speech. They all knew what had happened in Northern Queensland. The time was not far distant when they would find the North Coast of NSW as bad as North Queensland. When they came to Lismore on a busy day they knew what it was like ‘with aliens all over the place’. … There was also a short-lived call to arms in early 1948 when the Government decided to bring in 2500 ‘Europeans’ specifically to cut cane. Two hundred and fifty were to be allotted to the northern rivers to replace those cane cutters who had abandoned the game in favour of banana growing, causing the RSL to despatch a threatening missive to Arthur Caldwell that they had better not be Italians. One bloke uttered this odd mouthful: Australians would not accept foreigners because of an inferiority complex…. Any foreigners who came to Australia were ignored. For self protection these people formed cliques and stuck together, he added…? The Byron Bay sub branch was more blunt, and independently of the umbrella councils fired off a letter of protest to State Headquarters on the Government’s proposal to bring Italians to Australia to cut cane, even though no nationalities had been nominated. Egg on faces all round when they all turned out to be ‘Balts’, a fine type of immigrant, the first batch of 56 arriving on the north coast in Apr48 and another batch of 47 mid year. They were all from the Bonegilla Displaced Persons Camp in Victoria. At the same time Arty announced 500 Northern Italians were also being recruited, and emphasised with no Government financial assistance. The Tweed-Brunswick District Council of sub-branches also was perturbed about the increasing number of aliens that Arty was bringing into the country, but they used more genteel language in requesting the Government to refrain from granting assistance to aliens for land settlement until such time as it had been ascertained that no further returned servicemen were desirous of settling on the land. The Primary Produces Union was also a little concerned and resolved to ask that property rights be withheld from aliens until they become British subjects. There was one dissenter: I think it is a word (‘alien’) that should be knocked out of our vocabulary…. We ask men to come here and then brand them with a stigma. I think it is all wrong. … Arthur had a big sales job on his hands. A few months later he instructed his department to ban the use of the terms ‘displaced person’, ‘Balt’ and ‘Reffo’ and to use the terms ‘new settlers’ or ‘new Australians’, but his appeal to the Australian people to follow suit took a while to catch on. Large numbers of migrant cane cutters continued to come to the Tweed and Richmond into the 1950s. Early 1949 marked the peak in the banana glut, the progressive laying off of labourers and the exodus of many destitute growers from the industry. According to the Murbah CES officer the glut was directly responsible for the number of unemployed in the Murbah district hitting 100, from zero only 6mths earlier. There was a temporary reprieve with a cyclone mid year, which kept prices up, at least for those whose patches survived. The CES officer was also the keeper of statistics on ‘foreigners’, the interim new name for ‘aliens’ until the term ‘New Australian’ took hold, and advised that there were now 200 un-naturalised blighters in the Murbah district. They included numerous nationalities, but were mainly Greeks, Italians and Balts, he added. The ‘Balts’ were mainly Latvians, Estonians and Ukranians (sic). It’s a fair assumption that similar numbers were in the Mullum district, the registry for whom was at Byron Bay. Down in Mullum in the meantime, the locals had responded to the call by Captain Cain of the Salvation Army in Nov1944 for aid to the 500,000 homeless and destitute in Greece by donating 100 skeins of wool. Hitler’s hoons had invaded in Apr1941 and by holding out for a crucial two months, with the assistance of Australian and New Zealand forces, Greece’s contribution to the Allies’ ultimate victory was significant, delaying the German move on Russia and causing their subsequent entrapment by the Russian winter. Hitler’s ulcers were such that he diverted all of Greece’s primary production, resulting in the death of 450,000 Greeks through starvation and malnutrition. The retribution for Greece’s partisans tying up his large occupying army was the execution of a further 20,000 civilians. Many others suffered the same fate for sheltering Allied soldiers, particularly on Crete where 274 Australians died and 3000 became POWs. And his thing about Jews, who had centuries-old communities throughout northern Greece, resulted in only a handful of the estimated 80,000 prewar population surviving the gas chambers. In early 1946 the Lismore Greek Community, still looked to as the regional leader of the North Coast Greeks, began compiling a list of all soldiers in the Northern Rivers region who had served in Greece. This was passed to Mr Anagyros Stratigos, Vice-president of the Greek-Australian Soldiers' League, who toured the region mid year visiting the next-of-kin of Australian soldiers buried in Greece. At a civic reception in Lismore he said it was the wish of the Greek Government to initiate some form of recognition of Australians who fought in Greece and to the next-of-kin of those who died there. On behalf of the Regent of Greece he presented Prime Minister Chifley with a 2600 year old urn containing soil from the cemetery of Kalamaki Phaleron, near Athens, where Australian soldiers who fought and died in Greece were buried. …they offer it to a brother people as an official token of the most sacred and unbroken ties. (About a year later a Cenotaph to the Australian fallen was erected at Hasani near Phaleron). Doc Evatt, Minister for External Affairs and an honorary President of the League, was presented with the ‘Freedom of the City of Athens’. Stratigos, of Kytherian extraction, was born in Gladstone and happened to be visiting Greece at the outbreak of the war. He served in the Greek army and was subsequently on the staff of the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies in Greece. During the years of German occupation, he said, Greece became a ‘vast field of desolation’ and life was a nightmare. He saw people starved, persecuted and shot. In the streets of Athens he saw men and boys hanged on lamp-posts, dozens at a time. Hundreds of men, women and children died of hunger – 500 died in one day. Time and again he saw hostages shot on the rifle range near the Athens barracks – as many as 150 men and women at a time. Many of these Greeks were shot, he said, for hiding and shielding Australians. Of 8000 Australians captured in Greece, they helped about 4000 to escape. [Officially, of the 17,000 Australians who fought in Greece between Nov40 and May41, 594 died and 5132 were taken prisoner.] Joint Australian-Hellenic War Memorials have since been erected in Canberra, Melbourne and on Crete, and in May each year a delegation of senior Greek army and navy officers continues to visit Australia and New Zealand to attend commemoration ceremonies of the Greek campaign. Over 1600 Greek immigrants served in the Australian forces during WW2, joining their many Australian-born rellies. The Greek RSL sub-branch was formed in Sydney in 1942 and formally recognised by RSL Headquarters in 1950. In 2001 it still had 160 members. The Brisbane sub-branch still has about 30. Stratigos was followed a couple of months later by Mr K. McLeod Bolton, RSL State President, accompanied by Mr Stephens MLA. At a civic reception in Lismore he denounced the admission into Australia of vast numbers of aliens. He said he hotly contested their entry into Australia, and would go down fighting against it. Some of the types admitted were ‘lousy’ he said … ‘The returned man should be able to say who comes into the country which he fought to keep clean.’ In early 1947 it got to the stage where Arthur Caldwell invited the RSL to Canberra to view all departmental files to end the vicious campaign of mendacity and misrepresentation on the question of refugee immigrants. |
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