A number of shipping agencies are also held in North Queensland, Western Australia, and Sydney, and the Company itself owns a fleet of small vessels used in the coasting, lightering, and island trade. Altogether there are between sixty and seventy steamers, sailing vessels, and lighters owned and chartered which fly the flag of Burns, Philp and Co., and the red, white, and blue, with Scotch thistle in the centre, is a flag well known throughout the Pacific Islands and all round Australia. A mail service is run by the Company between Cooktown, New Guinea, and Thursday Island, also a three years’ contract was in 1897 entered into with the Government of Western Australia to run weekly between Albany and Esperance. Considerable trade is done with the Solomon Islands, and steamers run regularly from Sydney in this trade. The Company have also steam and sailing services with the New Hebrides, Louisades, New Guinea, New Britain, Ellice, and Gilbert, and many other islands in the Pacific, having a ten years’ contract with the Commonwealth Government for regular communication with all the islands which are practically under British control, while branch businesses have been established at Port Moresby and Samarai in British New Guinea, at Elila in the New Hebrides, Nukualofa in the Friendly Islands, and elsewhere. The first steam service down the Gulf of Carpentaria from Thursday Island was inaugurated by the senior partner of the Company, Mr. James Burns, in the year 1881, by means of the little steamship “Truganini,” which used often to be overcrowded with passengers and freight for Normanton.
The Company is the largest colonial shipper to the European and Eastern markets of Pacific Island produce, such as copra, beche de mer, sandalwood, ivory nuts, tortoise shell, and, above all, pearl shell, for which Torres Straits is so famous; add to this the amount of tallow, wool, and other Australian produce annually exported, and it will give some idea of the export business done. The Company has two fleets of pearl shelling luggers, comprising about forty pearlers in all.
Burns, Philp and Co. is essentially a company of a co-operative character, and a glance at the share list will show that the great bulk of shareholders are managers, employees, and others actually working in the company. This tends to a live interest all round, and each branch vies with the other in good management and success. The business was originally established at Townsville, thirty years ago by the senior partner, Mr. James Burns, and the new offices lately completed there at a cost of £15,000 are the finest in North Queensland, while recently, premises costing £50,000 were erected in Sydney. Mr. Philp, now the Hon. Robert Philp, Premier of Queensland, joined Mr. Burns some twenty-five years ago. Both are Scotchmen, the one hailing from Edinburgh, and the other from Glasgow. The Company was formed into a limited liability company twenty-one years ago.
Much could be written of the varied character of the business of Burns, Philp and Co., which embraces almost every colonial interest besides, while they are allied to a group of other colonial companies which act in accord with them, notably the North Queensland Insurance Company, and other concerns. For some years the Company engaged in the whaling enterprise with fairly successful results, but the detention of Captain Carpenter, and the seizure of the whaling barque “Costa Rica Packet” by the Dutch authorities in the Malay Archipelago, abruptly terminated what promised to be a most important colonial enterprise. It will be remembered that the Dutch Government had to pay a considerable sum to the captain, owners, and crew of the vessel for this wrongful seizure.
The total turnover of this Company now exceeds two millions sterling, and it is one of the largest and most progressive of the purely Australian concerns.
In the Sydney office a special telegraphic operator is always at work, and cable and telegraphic messages are sent to, and received from, all parts of the world direct. This is the only company in the colonies which has a Government operator established on the premises solely for its own business.
CHAPTER XI.
ABORIGINALS OF NORTH QUEENSLAND.
Where did the natives come from?
How long ago?