"Our families come from the four corners of the earth. Recently, we were joined by new Australians from the Baltic countries."
"When you cut cane with a man, you soon find out what he's like. If he doesn't have the guts and stamina for the game, you drop him. If he has, well, you stop worrying about the colour of his hair or the shape of his head. A good mate's a good mate and that's that."
After experiencing the real threat of an invasion by an Asian nation from the north during World War 2, Australians formed a popular public opinion that we must 'populate or perish.' Films like this were made especially to encourage immigration and development of the tropical north, where the population was, and still is, quite small, and also to encourage Australians to accept the 'new Australians' who were arriving in large numbers, including refugees from eastern and southern Europe.
North to the Sun features Cairns, the Atherton Tableland, and Cooktown. It shows the differences apparent to Australians from the south, such as clothing choices, architecture, and gardens. It highlights the importance of the hinterland to the development of the coastal ports and their economic viability. The narrator, speaking from the perspective of an Australian visitor from the south states:
"I found out one unexpected thing about Cairns; settlement didn't come from the sea. In the 1870s, cattlemen and gold prospectors were pushing northwards overland. Rich strikes of gold in the neighboring goldfields brought in thousands of diggers. Until then, the marshes and mangrove swamps on the coast had deterred settlement, but overland supply from ports a thousand miles away became impossible, so they came down over the coastal ranges in their bullock carts (you can still see the tracks today) to find suitable ports on the nearby coast."
This offered an important contrast between the history of the coastal ports of the south, and those of Australia's tropical north. The south had been colonised from the sea by the British Navy. From the first colony at Port Jackson to the furthest southern outpost in Tasmania, then west to Perth, and north to Brisbane, Australian coastal settlements had mainly been formed as coastal points from which to gain a foothold on the continent. The coastal ports in North Queensland, had developed due to demand by populations in the interior.
The film includes footage of the Cairns to Kuranda railway, and shows a train carrying lumber, probably from Ravenshoe, and there are scenes of axemen bringing down trees in the rainforest, and use of two-man crosscut saws.
There are scenes of farming on the the tablelands, including cattle, poultry, and corn harvesting. The development of the tobacco industry around Mareeba and Dimbulah is highlighted, and is an interesting insight into the importance the government placed on this crop.
Lt. Colonel Ken Gerrish was stationed in New Guinea and visited Mareeba for rest and recreation at various times around 1942 and 1943. He shot home movies which are deposited in the American National Archives. I put together this approximately 10 minute video from that footage. The footage opens with an outdoor church service near Mareeba. Men are shown playing baseball and drinking Australian beer. Footage includes officers engaging in target practice with pistols, and soldiers sailing to New Guinea on a Dutch ship from Townsville.
Living off the Land is a World War II survival documentary filmed around Cairns, Mossman, and Yungaburra on the Atherton Tablelands. The film shows bush tucker plants found in Northern Queensland and around the Pacific. It provides advice on water procurement, firemaking and signalling.