Across Queensland, place names carry stories that linger long after their origins fade. Few places spark as much curiosity as Banana, a small town in Central Queensland. Its origin story does not involve a single fruit. But it does involve a lot of bull ...
Is there really a Queensland town called Banana?
Yes, Banana is a real town in Queensland. In fact, it is one of the oldest towns in Central Queensland. It sits in the Shire of Banana, at the intersection of the Dawson and Leichhardt highways.
Despite being the Shire’s first town and original administrative centre, Banana now has fewer than 400 people.
Banana's story is a fascinating microcosm of the rise and fall in fortunes that is common to many Queensland towns.
Banana is in Central Queensland. It sits at the junction of the Dawson and Leichhardt Highways. These inland routes have long shaped travel, trade and settlement in the region.
Banana is 46 kilometres west of Biloela. Biloela now serves as the main administrative centre for the surrounding local government area.
At the 2021 Australian Census, the locality recorded a population of 348 people. This reflects a dispersed settlement pattern common in inland Queensland pastoral districts. While modest in size today, Banana's origins reach back to the early 1860s.
The town’s influence extends well beyond its population. Banana gave its name to the Shire of Banana, a large local government area spanning much of Central Queensland. Although the shire’s administrative centre later moved to Biloela, the name Banana has endured at a regional level.
Banana, 1924.
Is the town Banana named after the fruit?
Despite understandable assumptions, the name Banana has no connection to fruit growing. In fact, the town was most likely named after a working bullock named Banana, owned by – depending on who you ask – a teamster, stockman or a station owner.
The bullock’s name is regularly attributed to its ‘dun-coloured coat’, but a 1973 history, Banana past and present, also mentions that ‘its tongue hung out like a ripe banana, when it was working, hence its name’.
Banana was valued for his steady temperament when acting as a decoy to lead the enormous teams of wild cattle into ‘the crush’ (a narrow stall where each animal could be inspected before joining a fenced herd).
The beloved bullock eventually passed away. One story goes that Banana was found dead in a gully. One story says he became bogged and drowned in a lagoon. Another says he was buried near a creek. The most popular account was that he was found dead in a gully, henceforth known as Banana (or Banana’s) Gully.
The bullock became so linked to the area that in 1855, when the station property was gazetted, it was named Banana Station.
Some accounts diverge from this theory, claiming that the original documents for the station spelled the name Bananah, supposedly derivative of ‘several Aboriginal words’ which ‘mean either “waterhole” or “meeting place”.’
Whatever the truth, the name stuck.
A group of Banana residents, on Boxing Day 1924.
Early history of the town of Banana
Where the town of Banana stands today is part of country traditionally owned by the Gangulu peoples. The Gangulu language region includes the headwaters of the Comet River, taking in the towns of Clermont and Springsure, and extending south towards the Dawson River.
Colonial settlement began with a trio of Scottish brothers – James, Norman and Charles Leith-Hay – who travelled from the Darling Downs to squat on a section of pastoral land they named Rannes (after their family home in Aberdeenshire). What became Banana Station began as an outpost of Rannes. It was gazetted as its own station property in 1855.
As in other areas across the state, the majority of the Aboriginal population living on or near Banana were eventually ‘dispersed’ through means of violence and other acts of coercion. Many Gangulu peoples were forcibly relocated – under the auspices of the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act – to Barambah (now Cherbourg) settlement and later Woorabinda settlement. Today the Gangulu language is dormant, with no remaining native speakers, but efforts are underway to revitalise the language.
Near Banana Station was a ‘a beautiful lagoon, deep enough to sail a boat, and covered with waterlillies [sic]’, which became a natural resting point for travellers coming from the south. Some stories say gold was discovered in the lagoon, while others point to a teamster whose cart broke down and who never left. A township gradually developed around this resting point.
Mail coach outside the Banana Post Office, 1912
In 1860, the town reserve was surveyed, and on 5 June 1861, Queensland Governor Sir George Gerguson Bowen (after whom Banana’s main street is named) approved Banana as a township. Thirty allotments were put up for sale in Rockhampton a month later, the first bought by Robert Fitzpatrick, who opened a general store and post office, which serviced the mail service that ran from Taroom to Rockhampton.
In 1863 Banana was declared a polling place for the district of Port Curtis and the first hotel licences were issued (the Commercial and The Banana Hotel, respectively). By 1865, Banana had its first bank and telegraph station.
By 1871, Edmund Morey had been appointed Banana Police Magistrate, as well as Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages.
In September 1871, a Provisional School was opened in Banana. ‘After some delay and trouble we have secured the services of Mrs Clyde as teacher and our School opened ... with an attendance of 18 children,’ wrote Morey. ‘When the shearing season is over we may expect to muster about 24 scholars.’
Pupils and teachers of Banana State School, taken between 1906 and 1910.
The ‘school’ was in fact Mrs Clyde’s cottage. By 1874, a purpose-built building had been completed, and Banana National (later State) School officially opened. Interestingly for the time, a history of the school mentions that ‘children of several races’ attended the early school, including Aboriginal children from a camp near the lagoon.
By this time, the population of Banana township was about 120, while the district housed 800 people. It was beginning to become a town of some importance, particularly as a mail junction for messages and parcels travelling from Gladstone and Eidsvold.
On 15 March 1880, the first meeting was held of the Banana Divisional Board, which would later become Banana Shire Council. Banana would remain the centre of the enormous shire until 1930, when shire offices were moved to nearby Rannes.
Pubs from top to bottom
The Paris hotel, (seen here in 1924) owned by local hotelier James Paris, was known in town as the ‘Top’ hotel, because it ‘segregated gentlemen from the working class.’
Banana bypassed: a town’s decline
Banana’s success was not to last. By the mid-1920s, the Dawson and Callide Valleys were being opened up through closer settlement schemes, and new railway lines built to bring the new 'selectors’ to their new homes bypassed Banana, instead linking Rockhampton to Callide and Theodore.
Nearby town like Biloela, Rannes and Thangool soon began to outpace the former shire centre. The rise of motor cars had drastically cut the need for bullock teams and horse-drawn transport. More pertinently, travel time was getting faster, all but eliminating rest stops like Banana’s formerly bustling hotels.
By the mid-1930s, the town had practically disappeared from the map. The shire office moved over the range, along with the Criterion and Paris hotels, police station, courthouse, ambulance service and, eventually, the school. Many buildings were literally picked up and moved, leaving only stumps behind.
Through the war years, the township was virtually deserted, save for convoys of troops passing through on the Inland Defence Road.
The decline of Banana’s prospects inspired poet Lex McLennan to write his ode, Old Cattle Town.
In 1920, the town of Banana received its first visit from an aeroplane. Piloted by a Captain Coles, it was touring Queensland to promote War Bonds and Peace Loans. Coles reportedly arrived late and nearly collided with a car as he landed. Despite this, the visit was a success, and children got the day off school to celebrate.
Full circle: Banana returns to life
Curiously, Banana’s return to prominence was an echo of its colonial origins. Improved roads and regional infrastructure meant the small town slowly returned to its role as a resting point, this time at the junction of two major highways (the Dawson and the Leichhardt: nomenclature also echoing early colonial journeys) linking inland centres to coastal ports.
Cattle farming returned to the district through the 1950s and 60s, as thick scrub was systematically cleared to make way for grazing country.
In 1960, Banana State School reopened, thanks to an influx of new residents, many of whom were making use of land ballots, and many more working at the nearby Moura coalfield. In 1969, Banana’s first church opened its doors and along with it a new post office, community hall and recreation reserve.
Today, the town welcomes travellers, workers and sightseers alike, and even offers visitors a statue of Banana, the famous yellow bullock.
Resources
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About Banana, Outback Queensland website, accessed 11 May 2026
A Brief History of Government Administration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Queensland, State Library of Queensland website, accessed 11 May 2026
A century of local government in the shire of Banana : 1880-1980, 1980?, S.l. : Banana Shire Council, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland
Awakening a sleeping language, Australian Geographic website, accessed 11 May 2026
Banana, Central Queensland, Yesterday and Today : State School Centenary 1874-1974, 1974, Gwenda Jensen, and Banana State School, Biloela, Qld. : The Central Telegraph, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland
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Milne A (2023) ‘Australian Selectors in the Nineteenth Century and Discrepancies in Imaginings and Realities: Critical Family History’ Genealogy, 7(4), 78, https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7040078
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Trove website (various pages), accessed 11 May 2026
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