NAPOLEON was responsible for the invention of canning. Desperate to maintain his long supply lines, he offered a reward to the inventor of a system to preserve food. A French inventor won the prize but his process involved the use of large, cumbersome and fragile glass jars. Within a few years, an English method of using tin cans was the start of the canning industry. It was the first step in the growth of Australia's meat exporting industry.

Australia became the first country to develop commercial canning to help overcome the major hurdles to a strong export industry-distance and perishability.

"The Book of the Meat Trade" published by the Caxton Publishing Co. London records: - "In 1847 the brothers, William and Henry Dangar established a cannery at Honeysuckle Point, Newcastle, NSW, the first of its kind in the world. The beef was packed in four and six pound cans and soon a profitable trade with England developed. "

In 1867, 286,000 pounds of beef were exported. By 1881, exports had grown to 16 million pounds.

Australia scored another first when the world's first freezing works were built at Darling Harbour, Sydney, in 1861. After many setbacks and large financial losses, a method to freeze and transport meat over long distances had been perfected.

In 1879, the SS Strathleven left Sydney with 40 tons of frozen meat. Several months later, the beef arrived in good condition in London.

FREEZING technology and the growing cattle herd opened the way for continuous expansion of meat preserving and processing plants in the last 30 years of the last century.

Lakes Creek opened on June 2, 1871, on the site of a boiling down works. Its first day's kill was 11 bullocks. Through various owners, bankruptcies, fires, and in its later years big expansions, it still operates 118 years later.

Queensport (near the Gateway Bridge) was the site of the first processing plant in Brisbane. It began operations in 1881 but its first shipment of frozen meat failed. The next two owners were the Graziers Meat Export Company and Baynes Bros.

Baynes, in addition to killing for its chain of 50 city and suburban shops in Brisbane, began to build an export trade. In 1929, the plant was sold to the Angliss Group.

North Queensland graziers built a freezing works on Poole Island, near Bowen in 1883. The first cargo was loaded on the S.S. Faido, which was blown ashore by a severe cyclone, badly damaging the works. British In dian Steam Navigation Company bought the works, which continued production until the company abandoned the project in 1896.

Bergl Australia Ltd bought and operated a small local plant at Merinda until taken over by Borthwicks in the 1930s. They in turn sold out to Australian Meat Holdings (AMH) in 1988.

The economic crisis and the devastating drought of the 1890s were setbacks for the growing beef export industry.

The Government imposed a levy on cattle, half going to dairying and half to beef cattle. Contributions from the fund helped to establish meatworks at Pinkenba, Bowen, Redbank, Cardwell, Broadsound, Gladstone, Brisbane, Charleville, Mackay, Biboohra, Burketown and Sellheim.

AUSTRALIA enjoyed a boom period in the 30 years from 1860.
Large land areas were opened up and the flocks and herds followed. Railways, roads and new ports boosted exports. The growing pastoral and farming industries developed and in turn created industries to service their needs. Immigration continued to overcome periodic labor shortages.

Expansion and growth stimulated the growth of trade unionism. Unions, mainly for skilled workers, had existed since the 1840s. The increasing numbers of semi and unskilled workers began to organise as the capitalist boom began to subside.

Conditions were favourable for the expansion of existing trade unions, which mainly embraced skilled workers, and the formation of unions of unskilled and semi-skilled workers in the city and bush. Unions had existed since the 1840s, based on the ideas and structures of British unions. This included the barrier in some trades of a clear, sometimes sharp and disuniting difference between tradesmen and "others".

Skilled workers were relatively well off for the times. But in the cities, large numbers of unskilled workers lived and worked in appalling conditions.

In the bush, the invention of barbed wire and fencing eliminated shepherds and reduced the number of station workers. They formed part of the hungry army of nomads roaming the countryside in search of work.

The ranks of skilled bush workers were also depleted in the early 90s by the invention and perfection of mechanical shearing, displacing the hand shearers.

Henry Lawson's bitter comment summed it up:
"They're the men who tell us for reasons of their own that want is here a stranger and miseries unknown".