ASMALL CROWD of about 60 people gathered at the Landsborough Museum recently for the official launch of a booklet “Tobacco – Success & Failure”.
Compiled by Wendy Dixon for the Landsborough & District Historical Society Inc., much of the painstaking research was done by Samantha Fox, who had only recently joined up as a volunteer at the Museum.
The booklet was officially launched by State Liberal Member, Mark McArdle, who also unveiled a photographic display and a portable free-standing banner in colour as a travelling exhibition. The banner is on loan from the Society to the SCRC, on behalf of whom it was accepted by Laurel Henry for the Council Libraries.
Also present for the launch were the Hon. Peter Slipper, Federal MHR for Fisher, (centre) State member for Glass House, Andrew Powell MP, (far right) and Cr Jenny McKay (Div 5).
The first experimental crops of tobacco were grown in the Glass House Mountains area in the early 1900s; but it wasn’t until the late 1950s that settler-farmers, many of them Italian or German immigrants, turned from other tropical crops to the far more profitable tobacco.
The hey-days of the industry came in the ‘60s – and many of the local families are from that era, as was evident among the audience at the launch. The booklet lists about 80 names of one-time local growers.
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