Humpty Doo Rice Project

[3] Planning for the Humpty Doo Rice Project began in 1953 when Harold Holt, the then Minister for Labour and National Service, met with Allen Chase, an American entrepreneur at a party in Los Angeles.

Holt told Chase about the Northern Territory's potential for growing rice and the success that Chinese farmers had in the 1800s and 1926 and encouraged him to invest.

After this meeting Chase visited Humpty Doo, and the 300,000 hectares of sub-coastal plains that had been set aside for the project and was very impressed by them; he said "[t]his is exactly like the Nile Valley, only it is twice as good!".

[1] Together the syndicate began with a $40,000 survey of the area in 1954 and, in November 1955, incorporated as Territory Rice Limited and received the required agricultural leases which spanned from Adelaide River to Arnhem Land.

These local investors did produce higher rice yields but ceased operations in 1964 due to slow payment for crops, limited government support and not wishing to borrow more money.

[4] The Humpty Doo Rice Project struggled due to a variety of factors and magpie geese are often listed as one of the major issues that the project faced after it was reported that when sowing seeds "[w]ild geese, which swarm in the air, ate the lot" and that an army unit deployed there to assist had to shoot specially made "bomb guns" to scare off the birds.