Summary

An extract from the Foreword:

The perceived need for European labour to replace the Melanesian field workers led to the recruitment of a large party of Italians who arrived in Townsville on the Jumna at the end of 1891. Although the experiment was not repeated, the Jumna immigrants became the pioneers of the Italian community in north Queensland which was augmented by further immigration in the early 1920s and again after the Second World War.

To uncover and describe the experience of the Jumna pioneers we were particularly fortunate in having Ferrando Galassi working in the History Department. His own migration from Italy to Australia mirrored the experience of the pioneers who had embarked from Genoa, his hometown. In moving from Melbourne to Townsville he was able to understand the dramatic impact of the north's physical environment on the newcomers - the heat and humidity, the torrential rain, the lush abundance of the sugar districts, the threatening presence of insects, snakes and crocodiles.