34 pineapple plants amongst the crops flourishing in the 15-acre government garden at Brisbane that he had laid out in 1828. In the 1870s and 1880s experiments in pineapple growing occurred in what would become the Maroochy Shire, but the first commercial pineapple crop in the area was at Thomas Davey's Woombye farm in 1895. The area between the Mooloolah and Maroochy Rivers was closed to settlement prior to 1860 as part of a Reserve proclaimed by Governor George Gipps in 1842. Gipp's proclamation was rescinded by the Crown Lands Alienation Act 1860, which allowed for post-survey selection, and timber-getting licenses. In the early 1860s Edmund Lander leased the Mooloolah Back Plains run around the future site of Nambour, and timber getters started to exploit the area, working inland along waterways. The Alienation of Crown Lands Act 1868 also stimulated settlement, and by 1871 the census recorded 104 people living and working in the Maroochy region, although only 31 were permanent settlers. At this time there were about under pineapples in Queensland, mostly near Brisbane. Maroochy developed as a region of small farms, and by the mid-1880s the region had 116 people employed in mixed farming, 70 in sugar, 52 in timber, and only 15 in grazing. The Maroochy Divisional Board was created in 1890 (becoming the Maroochy Shire in 1902), and would develop into Queensland's largest fruit growing area between the 1880s and 1915, thanks to its climate and rainfall, with bananas being grown from the 1880s, and pineapples from the 1890s. It was possible for small farmers to make a living out of pineapples as thousands of plants could be cultivated in each acre. Other crops grown in the Maroochy Shire included coffee, ginger, strawberries and citrus. Dairy farming also played an important part in the local economy from the 1890s. The fruit industry in the Maroochy Shire was stimulated when the North Coast Railway was constructed northwards from Brisbane after 1886. The railway reached Woombye in 1890, and met the line from Gympie at Cooroy in July 1891. By 1900 the Blackall Range was a successful fruit growing area, and in 1901 Woombye was promoted as the fruit growing area in Queensland with the greatest potential. Around this time pineapples were overtaking citrus as the crop of choice in the area, especially at Woombye, with its well-drained soil and rolling hills. In 1914 the Brisbane district still