The Ella Bay property comprises 470 hectares of freehold land used as a cattle station that is isolated within the Ella Bay National Park and Wet Tropics of Queensland and a 160 acre rainforest block named Little Cove. The Ella Bay site was first surveyed in 1882 and large areas of the site were later cleared for banana production and small crop farming. There are numerous newspaper reports from the early 1900s of Ella Bay being one of the major banana growing areas in Queensland. The newspaper articles report that the land was leased to Chinese farmers and there were over 100 men working the site, that 500 acres had been cleared for bananas and there was a 340 ft long jetty built in 1902 to load steamers with bananas to Brisbane. There was a note of Ella Bay Road (tender for bridge, Cairns Post 1917). In 1906, this settlement of over 100 Chinese farmers was abandoned after a severe tropical cyclone destroyed their homes and crops. After selling any rescued fruit the Chinese farmers totally abandoned Ella Bay and the area was never resettled.