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

by Queensland

The old mill crushed enough cane during six months to make two or three hundred tons of sugar. The modern factory deals with sufficient to produce anything from six to ten thousand tons, and in some cases more.

Steam has taken the place of fires at the boiling stations, and boiling in vacuo has been as fully adopted in Queensland as in other parts of the sugar-producing world. In the old mill the masse cuite, the last stage of the product before the sugar is dried off, had to be dug out from tanks, men standing up to their knees in the sticky substance, and handling it in buckets. Now, the masse cuite goes direct from the vacuum pans to the receivers, and thence into the centrifugals. There the molasses is separated, and the sugar is carried automatically to the bags standing on weighing machines only a few feet from the railway trucks which are waiting to take the product to the ship's hold.

The old-style factory carried on its operations solely by day. The present-day factory is lit throughout with electric light, and works day and night (Sunday excepted) for five or six months, employing, according to its capacity, from 100 to 150 men. Around each factory has sprung up a small settlement of artisans, storekeepers, and others, while, under a statute passed by the Queensland Parliament, the employees are decently housed, fed, and assured of good sanitation, their mental, moral, and financial welfare being provided for by the institution of reading and recreation rooms, and the establishment of branches of the Government Savings Bank.

Turning to the agricultural operations, similar evidence of the evolution of the industry is to be found. Time was when a visitor could stand on some slight eminence and look over vast areas of cane, the vista unbroken save for a few trees, or the plantation roads running like ribbons through a sea of waving green. Now the prospect discloses the homes of farmers standing out amongst the cane, with all the evidences of a closely settled and thriving population. The large gangs of labourers tending the cultivation have for the most part disappeared. Instead, the farmer and his sons, with possibly one or two labourers, work side by side in the fields.

At harvest time long lines of carts drawing cane to the mills no longer make a picturesque feature in the landscape; locomotives now haul cane-trains over the hundreds of miles of narrow-gauge tramline which radiate from the factories to all points from which supplies of cane are drawn. Where but a few years back was naught but the lonely bush, its silence broken only by the lowing of a few cattle, the occasional passing of an aboriginal stockman or a party of drovers, carriers, or a chance swagman—birds of passage between the inland stations and the ports on the coast—townships have sprung into being, and every half-mile reveals the home of the farmer nestling among his fields of emerald green.

During the past few years, mainly owing to the satisfactory prices received for their cane, the farmers have been profitably employed. They have learned in the school of experience that cane cultivation requires practical knowledge, and that in many cases their land needs special treatment, which they must study for themselves. Nothing has brought this fact home to the farmers more thoroughly than the work of the Sugar Experiment Station at Mackay, and the valuable reports published by the late Director, Dr. W. Maxwell.

In the early seventies the sugar-planters of Mackay awoke one morning to discover the whole of their crops destroyed, as if a fire had passed over them. They then grew only one variety of cane, which had become diseased. Fresh varieties had to be introduced from abroad, with all the risk of introducing canes that were worthless, or, worse still, of bringing in pests or diseases. So far, sugar-cane in Queensland has been singularly and fortunately free from natural enemies. Thanks to the work of Mr. H. Tryon, the Government Entomologist, the grower readily recognises the presence of insect pests, and knows how to deal promptly with them on their first appearance.

The farmer is learning to know his cane; he studies its habits, and is quick to appreciate the good and bad effects of his operations. The analyses at the mills have directed his attention to the importance of cane being a good sugar-producer, and, as he is in many cases a shareholder in a factory, he is alive to the fact that weight of cane is not the only essential to success. For many years the need for securing canes richer in sugar was largely neglected all over the world, but recently efforts have been made to repeat in the case of cane the splendid results won by such men as the late Sir J. B. Lawes and the French chemist, Vilmorin, in connection with the sugar-producing qualities of the beet. The officials at the Queensland Sugar Experiment Stations have tested fully sixty varieties of cane, including some from Papua, to discover the agricultural and milling value of each.