Jacques Albert, a Swiss-born music teacher migrated to Australia in 1884. He and his son Michel Francois (Frank) established the Albert Music business in 1890 when they began to import Violins. In the early 1900's Albert's became one of the leading sheet music publishers in Australia. They also opened a music shop that was to become the biggest in Australia and started to distribute all sorts of musical instrument not just Violins. As well as distribution other peoples brands they started to use their own brand names, (probably the most famous being Boomerang which they used on mouth organs). The next part of the enterprise was to start a music publishing company and then a radio stations so all in all they had a pretty large musical empire in Australia. Over the years the firm has stayed in the Albert family control through 5 generations and the publishing arm is still in business today but they stopped importing, branding and distributing musical instruments a long time ago. When they were distributing instruments though, the catalogue included Ukuleles imported from Hawaii made by firms like the Hawaiian Mahogany Co. and Mossman, and Banjoleles from George Houghton & Sons in England