GOING BANANAS ........ Memoirs
Taiwan bananas today, green bottoms indicate tree-ripened fruit, the presence of a few brown spots on the skin indicates the perfect time to eat has just arrived.45 Years ago I was employed at Sydney’s Haymarket in the
Number Three section fruit market. My boss proudly stated on his office letterhead he had "38 Years Experience with Bananas" - indicating he was aged about 53 when he started his own company.
Les Walters was an agent for north coast NSW banana growers. The growers would send their freshly packed green bananas to Les and a dozen or more other Sydney agents who would then ripen them over several days in temperature controlled rooms. From memory about 68 degrees Farenheight. Cool temperatures in summer and warm in mid-winter.
Twice-daily injections of "gas" was carefully measured and piped into the rooms.
They used dangerous and inflammable household gas. If a cigarette smoker were to strike a light inside a ripening room an explosion was likely. We always kept a sharp lookout for anyone with a cigarette in their mouth.
Our company had a dozen large cool rooms, each holding several hundred timber cases of bananas. My job was to keep a record of sales and arrivals and later help out with some laboring work – which I enjoyed and appreciated very much as it helped build up my scrawny body into something reasonable. The equivalent of a few hours in a gym every day.
During my time at
the markets, my boss
Les Walters introduced Australians to smaller waxed cartons to replace timber boxes and fruit
in hands. Later fork lift trucks would replace the hired human hands who labored with manual handling of 30kg (approx.) boxes, which were later replaced by smaller and easier 16-20kg boxes and finally the cartons of similar size.
I had several enjoyable years at the No.3 fruit market before I quit to work with diving and the new techniques in underwater photography. The other option I had up my sleeve was work in my father’s Sydney pub – which I did part-time anyway.
These were good times for me. It introduced me to Sydney’s Chinatown which I feel in later years has led me to comfortably explore the culture here in Taiwan – where I am today, writing these words from a hotel room.
It is the simple subject of bananas which has inspired today’s writing. The Taiwanese bananas taste as good as the Australian variety did 40 or more years ago.
Something changed to the negative with bananas in Australia. Different varieties being introduced to combat problems?
As my former boss said, 40 years ago when he began receiving North Queensland Tully fruit, "They look better (than NSW bananas) but don’t taste quite as good". The difference then was minor. Today the variation of taste has become major, I'm remined of how good bananas can be when I visit Taiwan.
Few people would know the difference today and even fewer would seem to care. After all, what can be done? Nothing? Well, almost nothing.
Australia could and should consider importing Taiwanese bananas, for example. I'm not the first to suggest this. As for the pest’s problem – what if any valid pests exist in Taiwan that might be introduced to Australia?
Is it valid or more likely
simply political with votes being more important than the welfare of conumers.I reside at Coffs Harbour – the former banana growing capital of the east coast of Australia, but not any more. Plantations still exist but only a fraction of what was once there.
Local bananas on sale have a problem. The bottom ends (inside the skin) are diseased. The fruit for several centimeters is black and inedible.
Years ago all quality Coff Harbour bananas were
dipped in some chemical to prevent a problem we called by the common name
Squirter.Precisely what the chemical was I never knew. Too young then to even bother. Priorities elsewhere.
A cyclone 12 months ago which destroyed much of the Tully banana plantations and pushed retail prices five-fold higher (to around AUS$10 kg) allows Australia to seriously question importing future bananas.
The point I’d like to make, as an expert if only in the tasting of bananas, is that Taiwanese fruit today is equal in flavour to the long-lost Australian versions of many years ago.
Australian consumers could enjoy Taiwanese fruit today with better quality and equal or lower prices.
The downside might be other producers in South America and the Philippines might demand similar access to the Australian market, which is probably why we’ll have to endure the current sub-standard bananas for a long time to come.
In the meantime I’ll continue to enjoy my visit in Taiwan with the excellent bananas available here.
Footnote: North Queensland (Mission Beach to Port Douglas) red paw paw are sweeter, juicier than the samples here so far......Other Memoirs of The Haymarket Area. Music men
Kevin Todd (vocalist and original husband of blonde singer Laurel Lea). Rock drummer
John Catfish Purser the original Johnny O’Keefe and the Dee Jays band member both worked at No.3 market during my era there.
NEARBY IN CHINATOWN
Miss Tina Wong (tall Cantonese, lovely in a
CheongSam) with father Stanley Wong on the cash register of their popular upstairs in Hay Street,
Tai Ping -
renamed Tai Yuan Restaurant. (Both were to end their lives tragically and separately, the downside of wealth or perhaps in Tina's case, a quest for more of it).
JH on 07.04.07 @ 06:30 PM AEST [
Memoirs">link]
HAPPY AND SAFE EASTER THOUGHTS TO ALL
In Taiwan it was Tomb Sweep Day on Friday - the start of four days of public holidays.
JH on 07.04.07 @ 06:27 PM AEST [link]
