Henry Tucker's house in 1900, a typical pioneer's slab hut
The
beginnings of Mapleton
In 1889 the promise of the Blackall Range region came
to the notice of two young farmers, who were then working for their father as
market gardeners on their fruit and vegetable farm at Redland Bay, on the
outskirts of Brisbane. William James Smith, aged 21, and his brother Thomas
David Smith, 20, had emigrated from England to America with their parents
before moving on to Australia. Their sister Amy had been born while the family
were living in the United States. The Smith brothers had heard that some newly
surveyed land on the Range, nine miles west of Petrie's Creek, was available
for selection, so they set out that September to inspect it with a view to
settling there and growing bananas.
From their home in Redland Bay, they travelled by
train to Brisbane and then to Caboolture, which was the terminus of the North
Coast Railway at that time. There they boarded a Cobb & Co. stagecoach at
4.00 p.m. for a bumpy overnight ride to the Cobb's Camp Hotel where they
arrived at 6.00 a.m. the following morning in time for breakfast. That morning
they continued by coach over Currie's Knob to Matthew Carroll's Hotel on
the corner of the Bli Bli Road. The only other building in what was to become
the town of Nambour was a rough slab hut, occupied by Thomas Howard.
A cattle station homestead was located on a nearby
ridge. Only two other people lived in the area between the homestead and the
Range, James Stark near Highworth and John Murtagh at Doolong. Both men were
timber cutters, and had made many tracks into the scrub to enable them to
bring out logs.
Carrying heavy swags, the Smith brothers sought out
Thomas Howard, who led them up the hills of the Nambour cattle-run and over
the Highworth Range. A road had been surveyed, but it had not yet been built.
With care, they were able to find the occasional blazed tree which confirmed
that they were heading in the right direction. The men found that the area was
covered with thick rain forest containing large quantities of red cedar, beech
and pine, all tangled up with a mass of vines. Soon they reached the area now known as Kureelpa.
There they met James Stark who took them along the rough timber tracks that
criss-crossed the scrub to where John Murtagh was working, and there they
spent the night.
The next morning, with John Murtagh acting as a guide and accompanied by Mr Stark, they climbed up the Range to inspect the newly surveyed blocks that they had heard about. It took all day to cover the three miles along snigging tracks through Doolong to the foot of the Range, and then to force their way through thick scrub to the top. Once there, they found that the only tracks through the vine scrub were those cut by the surveyors, so they followed these to find the corner pegs of the few blocks that had been marked out. The brothers returned to Petrie's Creek, where they were able to obtain a tent, axes, brush hooks and food. They carried these supplies back up the Range and set about 'staking their claim.'
William Smith selected an area of 160 acres near the present Falls Road, that had not been previously surveyed. He pegged it out himself, and lodged his application for an agricultural farm with the Department of Lands on 30th October 1889. Within three weeks his brother, Thomas had lodged an application for another unsurveyed 160 acre block along the western edge of the Range near a stream that broke over a steep rockface in an impressive waterfall (now known as the Mapleton Falls).
After spending
some time looking over other blocks of land available on the Range, William
found some land that he liked better than the block he had applied for. After
some correspondence with the Department of Lands, William
forfeited his original selection and made a fresh application on 2nd August
1890. This new selection covered the area of the present Rainbow Park Drive,
north of Post Office Road. Mr David Smith, father of William and Thomas,
agreed to take over William's previous claim, but remained living at Redland
Bay.
These blocks were later surveyed properly with a theodolite by a Government
surveyor, David Smith's farm being measured out by Mr Alfred Lymburner in
April 1893. (Lymburner was a close relative of Alfred Delisser, who had been the
first surveyor to visit the area ten years before.)
The first task facing the Smith brothers was to cut a
walking track from their blocks to the top of the Range and then down its
steep slopes to the timber track below. The actual route that they took is not
known with certainty, but it is likely that they followed a blazed line which
had been surveyed between Nambour and the Mt Ubi cattle station. This went
straight down the escarpment from the north-east corner of today's Mapleton
State School reserve,
and linked up with an official road surveyed (but not built) between Nambour
and Doolong (now Sherwell) Road.
The track was narrow, steep, slippery, boggy and
dangerous but it was the track along which the Smith brothers walked every
week to carry supplies of food, necessities and tools from the boats at
Petrie's Creek and, after the railway was opened early in 1891, from
Nambour. Each trip to Nambour and back meant a walk of eighteen miles.
Clearing
the land
The next task was to clear their claims, and they
engaged two timber cutters to cut down the high trees. As the branches were so
entwined and the trees linked with vines, many trees would not fall separately
when cut. The method adopted by the scrub cutters was to cut almost through
the trunks of a large number of trees at once, leaving key trees uncut, about
a quarter of an acre at a time. The key trees would then be cut, sometimes
dynamited, and the whole lot would fall together. This was called a 'timber
drive', and was especially successful in clearing tree-covered slopes.
They felled twenty acres of vine scrub and, when it
was dry, they 'burnt off'' with a roaring fire that poured heavy clouds of smoke over the Range and left behind a blackened mass of logs and
stumps. After two months enough land was cleared to enable farming to begin.
Henry Tucker's house in 1900, a typical pioneer's slab hut
The first
farms
The Smith brothers built the first slab hut at
Mapleton in 1890. They cleared a small area, felled a hardwood tree, split
slabs and shingles and built a two-room hut with slab walls, a shingle roof,
and a flag-stone floor. This was on Thomas Smith's selection on the way to
the Falls. Their sister Amy came up and kept house for them for over two years
before marrying a new arrival, Mr David Williams.
The two brothers worked together and cleared areas on
their separate selections. They were in their early twenties and worked hard
from dawn until dark. They sowed grass seed in one section to make a paddock
for horses, and with their
mattocks they dug holes and planted bananas, maize,
sweet potatoes, pumpkins, tomatoes and other crops. Gooseberries sprang up
everywhere and produced prolific yields.
Acting on previous experience, the brothers decided
to plant bananas, and a block of thirty acres was prepared. The first
consignment of banana suckers was obtained from their parents' farm at
Redland Bay. They were first carted to Cleveland, then carried by rail to
Woolloongabba, by Pettigrew's steamer S.S.
Tarshaw to Maroochy Heads, by Histead's punt up Petrie's Creek to
Davis' Pocket, by bullock wagon up the rough logging tracks to the top of
the Range and by horse-drawn slide to Thomas Smith's property.
It took six weeks to transport the banana suckers
from Redland Bay to the Blackall Range and the cost was 7 pounds per hundred. After twelve months there was a magnificent
crop. Bunches of bananas were ready for market and the problem was how to
transport the fruit to the railway station at Woombye. The narrow tracks made
a vehicle out of the question. The Smith brothers purchased five pack-horses
and used them to carry two cases of bananas each, one on either side of the
pack-saddle, or three bunches each.
It was a day's work for a man to take five
pack-horses carrying ten cases of bananas from the Range to Woombye or, after
January 1891, the new Nambour station. Often the track was so wet that the
horses became bogged and had to be unloaded before they could be freed. Unfortunately there was a glut of bananas at the time, due to a
record
local crop. They realised only 2d. (2 cents) per dozen on the Brisbane market,
which was a very meagre return for all the work involved.
As the number of banana growers
increased, it became the custom to cut the fruit on certain days, and for the
men with their pack-horses to meet at 'The Box Tree' at the top of the
Range (a large tree near the site of the present-day Mapleton Tavernl), where a long
string of pack-horses would be made up. Horses and owners then journeyed down
to the railway to despatch their fruit.
Drought and flood
The Smith brothers had only
just felled and burnt their first area of scrub, planted their first bananas and
sowed an area with grass seed when in 1890-91 a severe drought scourged the
district. Surface water dried away and the creek that tumbled over the Falls
almost ceased to flow, due to the massive scrub timbers along the banks draining
the supply. The two brothers feared that they would have to leave their
selections and return to Redland Bay.
One day when Thomas Smith was
clearing land he noticed moist earth near the stump of a gum tree that he had
felled. The two brothers dug down to make a well. They split slabs and
shored up the sides of the hole to prevent any collapse of the wet soil. With round timber
they made a windlass. Using a technique known to the Aborigines, lengths of
lawyer vine up to twenty feet long were cut down, and the hard, rough outer skin
peeled off. The strong and supple rope resulting was just as strong as a hemp
rope. They joined lengths together, fastened them to the windlass, and lowered a
metal drum as a bucket to remove the earth. They travelled up
and down standing in the drum, suspended by three or four strands of lawyer
vine. At a depth of
fifty feet they found sufficient water for their needs. Those were the days when courageous, resourceful men with a will to
succeed used the primitive means at their disposal to achieve their purpose.
Lawyer vines were known to the Aborigines as Yura. They were long, tough, strong vines that grew in abundance, entwining the tops of trees. They had prickly fronds and long, tough tendrils with thorns like sharp-pointed teeth sloping backwards. Because of the tearing effect on clothing and bare skin, the lawyer vine became known as the 'wait-a-bit'. It is still known locally by this name and as the 'wait-a-while'.
The drought was followed by the
disastrous 1892-93 floods, which caused great havoc in south-east Queensland.
The Crohamhurst Observatory near Peachester reported that 107.6 inches of rain
had fallen in the 27 days up to 2nd February 1893, an average of four inches of
rain every day for a month. The settlers on the Range were unable to leave the
mountain top, and so could not get down to Nambour to obtain food supplies. In any case, Nambour was in
much the same predicament, as the railway and boats could not get through
because of widespread flooding. The resourceful women of the Range overcame this
difficulty by drying bananas and grinding them into banana meal. They used the
meal to provide sustenance until the track to Nambour became passable once more.
Strawberries
Owing to the small profit in
selling bananas and the difficulty of transport, the settlers soon decided to
try a crop that could be more easily packed and carried, and that had a higher
return. Accordingly, many acres of strawberries were planted which, in time,
gave a prolific yield. The marketing of the berries entailed a lot of work.
After picking the strawberries and placing them into specially made containers,
they were then graded. Prime fruit would be packed into fern-lined, home-made
pine trays, and the smaller berries stemmed and put into wooden kegs for the jam
market. These were transported by pack-horses down to the Nambour Railway
Station. Growers received a remarkably good return, obtaining one shilling (10
cents) per quart on rail at Nambour for the markets of Sydney and Melbourne.
Also, the Cape gooseberries
that were appearing everywhere produced abundant crops. These were picked during
the day and husked at night, the people working into the early hours of the
morning. The berries were packed in fifty-six pound casks and sent to Brisbane
for jam manufacture. The strawberries though, turned out to be merely a 'stop-gap' crop
after bananas went out and until the citrus trees came into bearing.
To help with money, the Smith brothers took a
contract with the Maroochy Divisional Board to fell timber to the width of one
chain and clear stumps and logs for a wider track down the Range. The payment
was three shillings (thirty cents) per chain, and this worked out at three
shillings per day in return for fifty-five hours labour per week. Payment for
scrub felling in those early days was three shillings per acre. William and
Thomas did this work while waiting for their crops to mature. It is recorded
that, after working all day on the road, Thomas Smith would hang a lantern on a
forked stick after his evening meal, and dig rows to plant strawberries.
On 21st October 1891, David
Smith's wife Emma, mother of William and Thomas, passed away. Soon after,
David decided to join his sons, and drove by horse and cart from Redland Bay,
along the Gympie Road to Nambour and then with great difficulty up the narrow
track climbing the steep hills to Mapleton. The journey took him a week, and he
settled on his block along the Mapleton Falls Road.
Citrus orchards
Around 1892, a Mr Benson, an agriculturalist who later became Director of Fruit Culture, visited the district. He strongly advocated the planting of citrus trees, particularly oranges and mandarins. Acting on his advice, David Smith planted an orange orchard, and it flourished. Finding that he had enough trees to provide a very handsome income, he decided not to undertake the clearing of his remaining land but subdivided the acreage into twenty small farms, selling blocks of twelve to fifteen acres to five other settlers.
Gradually the citrus orchards, which were later to make Mapleton famous, were established. William and Thomas Smith both laid out splendid orchards, as did many other settlers. Many of the first seedlings were obtained from Joseph Dixon's orchard at Flaxton. Mapleton quickly became a leading citrus producing area, the most popular trees being orange trees. The Mapleton crop matured one month later than other citrus areas, which was an advantage towards the end of the season. The orchards produced an excellent livelihood for many families. The soil was so fertile that a mature orange tree could produce over twenty cases of oranges in a season, with a return of nine shillings per case.
It was said in 1909 that an
acre of ground planted with mature citrus trees could yield 60 - 70 pounds cash per
annum, at a time when a worker's average yearly income was less than 100 pounds.
But the success of the orchardists pushed up the cost of land. Compared with a
purchase price of 46 shillings per acre in 1889, by 1909 prime land was changing
hands at 80 pounds per acre, nearly 35 times as much.