Our First Half-Century: A Review of Queensland Progress Based Upon Official Information

by Queensland

The middle nineties saw the fuller development of the central mill system. More groups of farmers were formed, loans were obtained from the Government, and further factories, mostly large and all well-equipped with the most modern machinery, were erected. A sudden demand arose in all parts of the coastal belt for sugar lands. The wiser of the planters subdivided their estates; owners of lands hitherto unutilised cut them up, and sold them to the inrush of farmers. The financial crisis of the early nineties and the action of Parliament in removing the embargo on the introduction of Pacific Islanders were no doubt contributing factors to the rapid increase in the number of would-be sugar-growers; but, whatever the cause, certain it is that at this time the spurt in cane cultivation and white settlement was greater than at any other period in the history of the industry in Queensland.

The year 1898 saw no less than 111,012 acres under cane, with a sugar production of 163,734 tons. The factories employed 3,709 men, nearly all Europeans, and the declared value of the sugar sent away from Queensland exceeded £1,300,000. The actual number of farmers cultivating cane in that year is not ascertainable, but it approximated 2,500.

It may fairly be claimed that Queensland has conquered her tropical littoral. Between Nerang in the South and Port Douglas in the North stretches a coastline of nearly 1,000 miles. At intervals along this great distance are large areas under cane and a number of considerable towns almost entirely dependent upon the sugar industry—including important centres like Bundaberg, with over 10,000 inhabitants, and Mackay and Cairns, each containing over 5,000 souls. Uninhabited swamps and forests and mountain lands—covered with rank tropical grasses or dense growths of trees and creepers—have given place to cultivated fields, in which stand thousands of comfortable homes rendered accessible by well-made roads, while many districts are provided with most of the adjuncts to modern civilisation. In fact, the white settler and worker live under conditions in no way inferior to those prevailing in agricultural centres in other parts of the world. European brains and European labour have brought into being a flourishing industry, and converted into one of the healthiest portions of Australia, fitted to become the permanent home of millions of our own race, a malarial belt where it had for long been thought none but coloured people would ever be able to labour and live.

The latter end of the nineties and the opening years of the present decade saw a further development of the principle of white settlement in our tropics. The federation of the Australian States offered the sugar-producer some escape from the keen competition of the world's markets through its fiscal policy of unhampered interstate freetrade, with protection against the world.

The Commonwealth Parliament, in its first session (1901), decided that the eight or nine thousand Pacific Islanders employed in cultivation should be returned to their islands, granting, by way of compensation for the increased cost of production, a bounty upon all white-grown sugar. As was the case under somewhat similar circumstances nearly twenty years before, this withdrawal of coloured labour gave a great impetus to planting. There was naturally some anxiety as to whether the supply of white labour in the future would be sufficient; but the profits made in the industry enabled the farmers to pay high wages at harvest time, and men flocked to the sugar districts from all parts of Australia.

One result of the labour legislation has been that many of the growers on large areas have considered it to their interest still further to subdivide their holdings, and their action has had the effect of increasing largely the number of farmers. It was estimated that last year the registered white growers of sugar-cane in Queensland numbered no less than 4,425. In addition to these, there is still a small number employing casual coloured labour. Of the whole output of 151,000 tons of sugar, fully 93 per cent. was produced without the aid of any coloured labour. In other words, white men almost exclusively, whether as employers or as workers, are now engaged in developing our tropical resources, and peopling with our own race solitudes previously untrodden save by a few aboriginal natives.

Less than thirty years ago it was the belief of most of those engaged in sugar production that the work of the mills was one of extreme complexity, and that success depended upon the possession of some special secret in the working. At that time the planter was also the miller. Now the work of cultivation is generally dissociated from the manufacture of sugar. Principally owing to the proprietary interest of the farmers in the various central mills, every stage of the work is openly and intelligently discussed, results are compared, and an efficiency attained which in many respects is equal to any in the sugar world. The factories no longer make sugar for the open market, but sell to the refiners. Analytical chemists check the work at every stage in the factory, and labour-saving appliances are the rule and not the exception. A modern factory is a wonderful illustration of the application of science, mechanical invention, and organisation to human industry.

Nothing can better indicate the evolution of the Queensland sugar industry during the past forty years than a comparison between one of the first mills established in the State and one of the most modern.

Forty years ago the sugar-cane was drawn in a cart close to the single set of crushing rollers, flung on the ground, and then fed, stick by stick, through the rollers, emerging with less than half the juice extracted. The crushed sticks were taken out and spread on the ground in the open, until dry enough to be collected and brought to the furnaces for use as fuel. In the modern factory the cane arrives by tram or train, is mechanically placed on a long endless carrier, and passes, at the rate of twenty tons or more per hour, through several sets of rollers, the refuse, caught by strainers, returning to the rollers, while the megass, or exhausted fibre, goes direct to the furnaces.