THEY come under cover of darkness, desperate men in search of a treasured bounty. Their target: bananas.

Since Cyclone Larry devastated the Australian banana crop in March, knocking over 85 per cent of the plantations, prices have gone up fivefold, with the fruit so scarce that it has vanished from some supermarkets.

That has tempted enterprising thieves to become banana rustlers, targeting unguarded plantations in night raids. A large bunch cut from a tree can fetch up to A$200 (£80), up from A$45 three months ago.

Urban thieves are also targeting shops, so that one fruiterer in Victoria has posted a sign on his window reading: “No bananas are kept on these premises overnight.”

“What can we do, hire security guards?” Harry Singh, 52, a farmer with a small plantation outside Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, said. He has been hit twice by thieves in the past three weeks. “Before March I was getting hardly anything for my crop,” he said. “Now people come at night to take them, they are so valuable.”

Growers in New South Wales have long been the poor men of the land in Australia and have always commanded lower prices than rivals in neighbouring Queensland, whose fruit are larger and juicier. But since the cyclone devastated the northern Queensland plantations, New South Wales growers are enjoying prices they could never have dreamt of, and they cannot keep up with demand. Before March Mr Singh was lucky to be paid A$6 for a 13 kg (29lb) box of bananas. Yesterday fruiterers in Sydney were paying up to $120.

Large wholesale markets there are advising customers to watch out for thieves and are taking special precautions themselves. One fruiterer had to call in a motor mechanic to unlock his lorry after his supplier, wary of placing the fruit on the back, locked it inside the cab — along with the keys. Two weeks ago thieves used a light truck to carry 18 large bunches from Harry Atwal’s plantation, also near Coffs Harbour. The loss was worth more than A$3,000.

Growers say that no plantation is safe and that the shortages could get worse in the coming months as winter slows supplies from southern plantations. The large far- northern plantations devastated by Cyclone Larry are not expected to start yielding marketable fruit until at least early November.

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