The People of Innisfail, North Queensland

Although, yes, Innisfail is a very pretty town in spectacular countryside, the thing that makes it so special is the people. Many locals say "When I arrived I planned to only stay a few years but I made the best friends I've ever had ... and now it's 40 years later and I'm still here."

Town Monument
Tribute to the Pioneering
Sugar Workers.

It must be the name. Innisfail. My tribe, the Milesian Irish, believed there was The Promised Land somewhere out there called "Innisfail". (We joke that when Moses was talking, we weren't really listening. Say it out loud and with a bit of an accent - "Innisfail" and "Israel" - you can see how someone would make that mistake.) And here, dah dah, you have "Innisfail" itself!

Innisfail township

Actually, Innisfail wasn't meant to be its name. Thomas Fitzgerald, the sugar plantation owner who founded the town, named it "Geraldton" but he had Irish workers, obviously Milesians, who nicknamed the place "Innisfail" and, yup, that's the name that stuck.

You do know, don't you, that they carved this area out of a 22 million year old rain-forest where just about every creature is toxic - with an overkill of between 10 and 100 - so those original Irish workers were probably being a tad ironic ... but still ...

How can anyone resist?

Today, well, it really does seem like The Promised Land. The population is 8,000 - although there are 19,000 more on the surrounding farms - and, although everyone speaks English, there are 128 different languages spoken at home. And everyone gets on so well. Astonishing, huh! 128 different races and everyone gets on with everyone else. I think it's partially the result of several generations of "a wilderness/frontier mentality" but mainly because everyone simply wants to live a good life and raise their children to be good people; small ambitions but enormous in the grander scheme of things.

It's the history of the place too. The Kennedy Expedition of 1848, sent by the Colony Government to discover exactly what was up in the North, was stopped by The Wilderness several hundred miles to the south. Too much jungle! Too much toxic wildlife! Too many Ma-mu brandishing spears! The Expedition turned back saying there was nothing up there worth the trouble you'd have to go to to get it, so Australia drew a dividing line just above Rockhampton, and thus North Queensland was, for the next 150 years, mostly ignored.

Even after gold was discovered in the NQ hinterland in 1864 and the subsequent rush meant an influx of people from across the world, the Colonial Government still ignored the region. Irish, Maltese, Spanish, Greeks, Italians, Yugoslavians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Filipinos, and many more, all came out looking to strike it rich and, yup, ended up mostly goldless but richer than they could possibly imagine since they'd discovered a place where everyone got along regardless of race or creed or religion or anything else that usually causes dissention between nations ...

A God at
The Innisfail Joss House.

... and so put down roots, carved small farms out of the jungle, and made it their home.

Here's another thought about why people get along so well: all that toxic wildlife. There's something about knowing everything around can kill you horribly that makes humans exceptionally "species-ist". Us against Them. And then there was the isolation! The other Us against Them; Us N.Qers against Them Southerners!

Then, in the 1880s, it was discovered that the area could grow sugar, so the rich-Anglos - THE ULTIMATE THEM! - arrived from the south and, because no locals wanted dealings with these types, they had to send ships out into the Pacific to Blackbird - kidnap Pacific Islanders - and it was these Kanakas (Sugar Slaves) who carved sugar plantations out of the jungle and who built the towns and wharves to ship out the produce. Then, in 1900, came Federation and "White Australia Policy" so - after ordering everyone who wasn't "white" off Australia's shores - (I'll write about what happened to the Kanakas in another posting) the Anglos brought out Irish and Italians to work their plantations instead.

Town monument
honouring the cane cutters!

Also, well, you know, because of the sheer numbers of "non-whites" in the NQ region, and the fact everyone got on so well, and the fact that all the original population, including the Ma-mu, didn't give a toss about "Anglo-Authority", no one actually left. In fact, just about everyone "non-white" in the rest of Australia charged up from the south and also made the place their home.

Today, those plantations are all gone and it's the descendants of those Italians and Irish who own the sugar farms.

Tribute to the pioneering ancestors
of the Italian sugar farmers.

By the dint of hard work, they bought up their own land and planted sugar and so everyone became very comfortably off, and today they also grow exotic trees and farm fish and so have even become rich.

And four of the five Ma-mu tribes now live in Innisfail, and the fifth, the Djirribal, live in the jungle hinterland, left alone by their own choice to live their traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They're all good people. Like I said, everyone gets along.

However, if I'm creating a picture of perfect blissful harmony, I should mention The White Horse Wars, when, back in 1924, the Italians went to war - Sicilians against the Calabrians - running street battles through the streets of Innisfail. Took a year, but eventually the Calabrians won, and so the Sicilians were all ordered off Australia. I believe they went to America instead.

And, also countering this picture of perfect harmony, I should also mention that, until the 1960s, no one ever married outside their own race. Brides were always imported from The Homeland. But then, from the 60s until today, inter-racial marriages started to happen. And their off-spring are invariably sublime ...

Juanita
Irish-Italian-Chinese-Fijian

And the Irish-Italian mix. Oh boy! Here we are talking "perfection". Whenever, as a teacher, I'd meet a kid, usually from Innisfail, who was exceptionally beautiful, gifted, "together", genuinely nice and deeply happy, I'd say "How does your gramma get on with your nona?"

Vicky
Irish-Italian

Never once did they say "My what?" Every time, the answer would be "They hate each other. It's like each of them is fighting for my soul. One wants me to be Irish. The other wants me to be Italian." "Which have you chosen?" I'd ask. "Hard to decide." was the invariable reply. "Gramma has better stories, Nona has better desserts. Maybe I should just say I'm both."

Since these Innisfail kids are always so outright special, I'd say that THIS is the way to raise kids. Yup, there's something deeply and valuably esteem-raising about having an extended family of hands-on, story-telling, dessert-making, loving adults fighting for your soul and identity. That's probably why it's so sad the Chinese have all left; there's no Chinese grandmas left to establish "a Chinese soul" in their descendants!

Jamie
"What do you mean, my
grandpa was Chinese.
I thought I was Italian!"

So I suspect that's why people who arrive intending to stay a short while, end up staying forever, and why they make such good friends. There's more than a tolerance of diversity here, there's a deep acceptance of it; an indulgence and celebration of it even. So New-Arrivals find themselves immediately accepted and supported, and, with this support from like-minded folk, discover their erst-while hidden interests and talents, and then develop these and become good at whatever, and start, well, becoming passionate, interesting, quirky people who are doing something different and meaningful with their lives.

If I were to move back to Australia, I think I'd choose to live in Innisfail ... except ... you know, that's where the Oz Army had those secret Agent Orange and other chemical warfare tests, and so ... you know ... that consequential wide-range of cancers thing that is forever happening there!