hi hedwig

sorry - I don't have any pups at the moment

the link below will tell you about bananas

I think they can only be sold by registered nurseries and if you get one off a neighbour you have to fill out a form fom the Nambour research centre

the nambour research centre does sell plantlets at about $6.80 each - tho they aren't available until may.

you can get an info pack and application forms by using the contact link on the web page below

Here is a link that might be useful: ten things to know about bananas

Looks like the banana bug is infectious :-)

You can get some varieties of bananas now (I just got a 2-ft Goldfinger pup from a grower in Withcott: $5 for the plant and a whopping $18 for the Greyhound bus to bring it to me), provided that the variety you want is available now from a grower. (The Goldfinger was; the Blue Java, because it's apparently fallen out of fashion, is currently only available from the Nambour centre, which will only start sending them out in May, as Paradisi explained.) But you do need a permit to get or grow bananas--technically, you need a permit even to replant one of your own banana plants (ie to cut off a sucker/pup from your own banana and plant it a couple of metres away from the parent plant in your garden, or to give the pup to a neighbour across the fence). Apparently the edible bananas are all so closely related that they're extremely vulnerable to being wiped out by disease. (This happened globally with the commercial variety popular before the Cavendish, which is now under threat itself.) Hence the need to control their cultivation.

To get my Goldfinger, I just followed the link provided by Paradisi and sent the DPI an email. In return, I got a phone call from an inspector who told me which grower was likely to have the species I wanted, and posted me a permit (which is free) in the mail. Easy-peasy.

The link below contains a pic of what my Goldfinger pup looked like when it arrived off the bus.

Here is a link that might be useful: My Goldfinger pup

Thanks for the information! It seems not to be the right time planting bananas, I have to wait