Category Archives: Sugar Industry

Transport

The 1920’s saw the arrival of the car in Mackay. Transport had always been a difficulty for people wanting to travel into Mackay from surrounding districts. Bridges were low level and subject to flooding. The Mackay Railway was completed and opened on the 10 August 1885. Locos, an engine with metal cane bins attached, (at first steam then diesel) took cut sugar cane from the cane fields to the Mill for crushing. It was not until the mid-1970’s that a higher level bridge was built across the Pioneer River at Mia Mia that would enable Locos and cars to travel from Mia Mia to Mirani.

Sugar Industry

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Following the exploration and discovery of the Mackay district credited to John Mackay in 1860, very little of the original land was being used for cattle grazing within 20 years of that discovery. The first ton of sugar was made at Captain Louis Hope’s sugar plantation at Ormiston, Cleveland in September 1864.’

In the early days of sugar growing many individual steam mills sprang up to crush sugar for market. The Sugar and Coffee Regulations of 1864 accelerated the growth of the sugar industry in Mackay. One of the first plantations ‘Alexandra’ was owned by Thomas Henry Fitzgerald. In 1975 a disease called ‘rust’ devastated the sugar plantations and many went into receivership. The first central mill to be built at North Eton was closed in 1988. Sugar cane from Mia Mia went to North Eton Mill until the Mill closed.