General News
1 July, 2026
Trade: from gold to tourism
FROM early exports of gold, tin and beche-de-mer to today’s industries of tourism, education and tropical agriculture, Cairns has always been a trading city.
The port connects the region to southeast Asia and the Pacific. Trade missions, especially with Papua New Guinea, Japan and China, have built strong economic ties. Today, trade continues to underpin the city’s economy, supporting jobs and business opportunities across multiple sectors.
Official opening of Starr Bowkett – 63 Lake Street
ON 15 December 1953, a new, most modern Cairns business premises opened in the heart of town, known as the new Starr Bowkett Centre.
The Cairns Starr Bowkett Building and Investment Society was a leading investment society in Cairns offering low interest loans to the community and capitalising on local investment in the housing market.
The society had financially excelled so much since the mid -1930s that it was able to construct a new and impressive five-floor building with a 9.1m frontage to Lake Street.
Flashback to tourism in 1970
BY June 1970, according to the Australian Tourist Commission, Australia was undergoing a positive boom in foreign exchange earnings from overseas visitors. Australia had welcomed a massive 415,000 visitors for the 1969/70 financial year raking in a whopping $127 million revenue.
Fast forward to 2023/24, figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics note that Australia welcomed over 7,966,040 tourist visitors to our shores, or as Tourism Research Australia notes $31.7 billion was spent in Australia by international visitors. Worth standing strong for our local Cairns tourist industry.
Those magnificent merchants
BURNS Philp & Co. Ltd was one of the most influential commercial firms in Australia and the Pacific during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In Cairns, the company operated as a major trading house based on Abbott Street, acting as general merchants, shipping agents, insurers and commission agents.
They played a central role in connecting Cairns to wider national and international markets by representing shipping lines such as the Eastern and Australian Steam Shipping Company and the Queensland Steam Shipping Company.
Cairns sugar wharf and harbour
FROM the beginning, Trinity Inlet offered splendid opportunity for the construction of a major port and series of wharves to service the emerging provisioning town of Cairns. Officially declared a port of entry on the 1 November 1876, Trinity Inlet provided a safe harbour for shipping traversing into the port, we well as for merchant and provedore firms exporting local product to other places.
Major exports included timber, sugar, rice and bananas as well as many people who were in the region as labourers, travellers, hopefuls and families.
Over time, the wharves and harbour evolved, becoming a major transportation hub and a catalyst for the growth of Cairns as a tourist destination.
Profitable crop
CHINESE settlers were keen agriculturalists and experimented with many crops in the early days of Cairns.
One crop which was exclusively occupied by early Chinese entrepreneurs was bananas for export to Southern markets in NSW and Victoria as well as to feed the local population.
