Image: Proserpine area cane farm, representative of the sugar industry in Central Queensland. Links to larger image.

Above: Proserpine Mill area: cane farm near Foxdale on the 'Up River' Road, representative of the sugar industry in Central Queensland.

The sugar industry as we know it today began in the 1800s with small plantations and local sugar and juice mills. As the industry expanded rivers and creeks were often used for transporting the cut cane, otherwise bullock or horse-drawn carts moved the cane to the mill.

The Australian industry gained impetus with the blockades of the American civil war but by 1855 prices had dropped again and many mills were operating at a loss. This pattern of boom and bust has continued worldwide throughout the succeeding decades to the present.

Cane tramways came with the expansion of growing areas and mill consolidations around the turn of the twientieth century. Portable track systems and lightweight rolling stock allowed temporary narrow gauge lines to be extended into the fields where wholestick cane was loaded by hand and the trucks pushed/pulled out to the permanent way. Surplus World War I trench railways equipment facilitated the expansion of Australian and other SE Asian tramways. Cuban and American systems, on the other hand, usually used the larger equipment and operating practices of their mainline cousins.

The change from plantation to family-owned farms, along with the labour shortages of the twentieth century wars, encouraged innovation in both harvesting and transport technologies. By the 1970s both wholestick cane and steam power had been replaced in Australia by cane billets transported in bins and pulled by diesel power, although steam power did continue in some other countries

The sugar milling process also improved, from low-efficiency crushing and batch boiling to today's highly efficient semi-automated mills producing thousands of tons of raw sugar a day. However, transport of the cane to the mill remains one of the largest milling costs.

Many mills operate rail transport systems to minimise these costs. Tracks are typically laid on easements beside Shire roads or along farmer's fields with the rail system, locomotives and rolling stock mill owned and operated.

Since cut cane deteriorates fairly rapidly, the tramway system also performs an important short-term storage role. Empty wagons are delivered to the farm pick-up points just-in-time for use with full loads delivered to the mill as rapidly as possible, maintaining a constant flow of raw cane. The cutting season extends over several months (typically June to November in Australia) to optimise sugar production and minimise the infrastructure investment required.

Raw sugar must still be refined before delivery to the final customer, typically at an overseas or capital city refinery. Rail systems often carry the raw sugar to the nearby port or refinery and some transport molasses and other by-products as well.

Sugar growers are very dependent on the world price for sugar, which fluctuates up and down as politics and the weather dictate. It seems reasonable to suggest that rising costs, low prices and urban development will hasten the end of the sugar industry in Australia, just as similar factors have effectively ended sugar production in a number of other countries.

 

last updated: 25/07/08.