Into the second generation - Page 2

From Griffith REVIEW Edition 10: Family Politics
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.

Written by Elizabeth Pullen

Page 2 of 2

IN 1997, AN UNLIKELY STRANGER STOPPED AT GRANDFATHER'S ROADSIDE FRUIT STALL. "Do you sell banana leaves?" The tall, dark-skinned figure asked. Grandfather looked him up and down, trying to figure out his nationality.

"I'm Albert," he said and extended his hand.

Grandfather had been approached by women wanting dead banana leaves for raffia weaving and their deleafing dead leaves from stools had helped when desuckering. "You have to cut them yourself and not take the dead ones from the ground, they're mulch."

"No, no, I want living leaves."

Grandfather was dumbfounded. Albert explained that he supplied banana leaves to a Chinese man in Sydney who used them to wrap around rice and meat in his factory. Being a Pauline Hanson supporter, Grandfather didn't want to change from supplying Australia's biggest fruit seller to supplying foliage for Asian cuisine.

"I'm old," Grandfather said. "I won't sell you leaves."

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Albert selected a hand of bananas, paid for them and walked to his van. Grandfather looked over his shoulder at Dad's banana patch that lined the gully. His disinterest showed; few stools were propped and bagged and pseudostem suckers crowded the ground.

"You could always go down the packing shed and chat with my son."

Dad couldn't have known that the foreigner who entered the packing shed would be his plantation's salvation but, as farming is already the biggest gamble, he agreed to sell Albert leaves. After living in the shadow of Coffs Harbour's "Big Banana", Dad developed a new way of thinking about the plant he'd farmed his whole life. Today he no longer grows bananas for their fruit; he grows them only for their leaves. As if this idea wasn't alien enough, Albert later showed him how to sell banana bells, the part of the plant that hangs beneath the banana bunch like a gong.

But just as when a new knowledge economy surpasses an old, family politics inevitably emerge. The traditional farming practices Grandfather taught Dad are being abandoned. Grandfather desuckers and Dad doesn't. After sharpening his desuckering spade with an angle grinder, Grandfather goes desuckering. He removes the unwanted pseudostem suckers and the suckers' eyes, circular growing points, from the base of every stool. To completely desucker his patch takes all year. In the summer and autumn months, he keeps a can of Mortein down his overalls as wasps swarm and attack.

Now that Dad's selling banana leaves, he doesn't desucker and his spade is rusting. In his patch, the pseudostem suckers grow to produce more leaves.

Grandfather bags his bunches and Dad doesn't. Grandfather ties his leather carpenter's pouch full of pest strips and nails around his waist, grabs blue and silver recycled banana bags, a ladder, and goes bagging. A bunch needs to be propped before it's bagged so that strong wind won't blow the stool over. He picks up a wooden prop from the ground and looks at its square u-shaped wire. He remembers how proud he and Dad were when inventing this new propping wire. It kept their stools up in strong wind when all the other stools in the valley fell. He props the stool's bunch, climbs up the ladder to cover the bunch with a bag and nails a square pest strip into its stem. He completes a row and looks back, admiring how professional the plants look when they've got their ties on.

Now that Dad's selling banana leaves, he doesn't go bagging and his carpenter's pouch is a habitat for spiders. Instead he debunches and removes the flower stalk from the top of the plant before it grows into a banana bunch, so that the plant will use all its nutrients to produce leaves.

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Perhaps the greatest farming practice change is the banana plants themselves. Grandfather prized Cavendish bananas and they have presided in the farm since 1959. But now that Dad's selling banana leaves, he's gradually replacing all his Cavendish bananas with Ladyfinger bananas and Black Ducasse bananas. Their banana leaves are preferred by his Chinese buyer in Sydney because they are soft, easy to wrap around rice and meat and they don't discolour when steamed. The Black Ducasse bananas also produce the banana bell Asian buyers desire as an ingredient for seafood stir-fry.

The traditional packing-shed practices Grandfather taught Dad are also being abandoned. Grandfather lifts the heavy banana bunches from the truck to the bench to dehand, cutting the bananas from the stem. The hands are washed in a bathtub of fungicide and then packed in cardboard cartons he's folded and stapled with a large, foot-operated staple gun.

Now that Dad's selling banana leaves, he doesn't have a large amount of packing work. He lifts leaves from the truck to the bench where Albert cuts the leaf from its stem for Dad to pile, roll into bundles and tie with string.

It is a bitter irony that to save the banana plantation for his next generation, Grandfather has had to accept the passing away of all that he's known and done. It is by abandoning traditional banana-farming practices that Dad's able to make the plantation economically viable. "When I was doing the fruit, there was very high input costs ... I had to buy cartons which were close to $2 each, plus you had the cost of freight all the way to Melbourne, plus you had the costs of bags, the cost of props." Dad says: "I think I can grow leaves on a per hectare basis for maybe about a third of the cost of growing bananas bunches, but on the other side of the ledger, you're probably getting back less per hectare for leaves."

Even the place in the packing shed where Grandfather is said to reign has changed. At smoko time, the jar of Arnotts biscuits is pushed aside to make room for Albert's exotic dishes: fried cabbage, curried potato with lentils and on special occasions, butter chicken curry. On Dad's birthday, Albert brought four big pots full of butter chicken curry and rice. At no time is their cuisine more threatening than when Ananda, Albert's casual worker, is at the smoko table. With every mouthful of food, Ananda bites a red birdseye chilli. "Everything has got to be hot for Andy, it's just a cultural thing, it's the way he is ... I've always believed that diversity is a good thing in life, different types of music, different types of food, makes a more interesting world," Dad says. But Grandfather is happy with his usual corned beef sandwiches. When offered half Grandfather's sandwich, Albert declines.

"A cow is a sacred animal. I drink its milk like I did my mother's. I also don't eat pork as pig is a dirty animal," Albert says.

"What do you know," Dad says, eager to share common ground. "Me and Dad don't either, we're Seventh-Day Adventists."

"I reckon, if ya get a Holden they give ya a book to tell ya what oil to put in it," Grandfather says. "Well, God did the same thing. Leviticus chapter 11 in the Bible has all the things you can eat and all the things you can't."

Like the food, conversation has never been more diverse. Albert shares many stories about Fiji, justifying Grandfather's stance to never holiday (the United Arab Emirates trip was strictly business) away from "the lucky country". Albert "told us a lot about the culture in Fiji. At present, there's been a bit of an upset in Fiji where the local Fijians want to hunt the other people out ... and if they're successful and get rid of all the Indians and all those who have been working hard, I think the place will slip," Grandfather says.

While the banana plantation hasn't moved up the hill in the direction Grandfather anticipated when planting his first banana corm, he's learning to be pleasantly surprised. If the corm's first pseudostem had a flower and grew a banana bunch to take care of his family, and the corm's second pseudostem sucker grew banana leaves to take care of his son's family, he enjoys pondering what the corm's third pseudostem sucker will produce to take care of his family's next generation when he's gone. ♦

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