Collinson, J. W.

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260 
THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE SUGAR 
INDUSTRY IN THE CAIRNS DISTRICT 
[By J. W. COLLINSON, F.R.G,S,A,] 
(Read at a meeting of the Historical Society of 
Queensland, Inc., on October 28, 1943) 
The history of the development of this State dur-
ing the past 100 years has been a record for the most 
part of primary production, in which the mining and 
pastoral industries played the principal role in the 
early stages. Agricultural possibilities were no doubt 
realised, but there was little encouragement in this 
direction in the early days except the necessity to keep 
supplied the needs of the different settlements. Even 
the famous Darling Dowms came under the imputation 
of not being able to grow a cabbage. The first efforts 
to establish staple products such as cotton, sugar and 
wheat met with various fluctuating fortunes and 
failures—mostly failures—sugar in especial passing 
through many troubled phases during the early seven-
ties. The story of cotton, wheat, and arrowroot and 
other enterprises designed to develop our latent re-
sources provide sufficient material for an interesting 
study, and the same may be said of the gradual expan-
sion of the sugar industry founded at Ormiston in 
1863. 
In a comparatively short period investors in sugar 
lands found their way northwards, and in turn Mary-
borough, Bundaberg, Mackay and Cardwell districts 
attracted settlement. Again the story would be beyond 
the limits of a paper such as this, and the settlement 
at Cardwell in the years 1870 onward marked the most 
northern of the sugar plantations. In 1873, G. E. 
Dalrymple left Cardwell in charge of the expedition to 
open a port to the Palmer Goldfield, and made a most 
favourable reference to the rich lands of the John-
stone River. That expedition reached the Endeavour 
River one day ahead of the steamer bearing the Gov-
ernment party, to found the port of Cookto"wn in 
October 1873. Three years later other mining develop-
ments led to the founding of Cairns on Trinity Inlet in 
October 1876, The feverish, hectic days of mining 
"rushes" and the saddened, disillusioned fossickers who 
found their way to the coast, did little to further per-
261 
manent settlement, as the disappointed ones were 
usually penniless, 
Chinese Enterprise 
Among those who felt the decline of gold-seeking 
on the Palmer, were a number of stranded Chinese, 
some of whom found their way to Cairns, A syndi-
cate was formed by an educated Chinese, Andrew 
Leon, who had acquired knowledge of tropical agricul-
ture in the West Indies; and it was said that 100 
Chinese contributed £25 each and became working 
partners. Their first efforts turned to cotton, coffee, 
and rice. A cotton gin was installed, and though there 
is no direct record of production, cotton lint to the 
value of £140 was exported from Cairns in 1882, But 
it was soon decided to grow sugar, and by August 1882 
the first sugar mill, called the Pioneer, was erected by 
Walkers Ltd., and opened with the usual ceremonies. 
The only European employed was the engineer, and 
Chinese were doing all the other incidental work both 
in the mill and the field. The miU closed down in 1886 
after a five years run, primitive machinery and primi-
tive methods in the fields each having contributed to 
its failure. Though Hop Wah had commenced crush-
ing in the 1882 season, other developments had taken 
place on the Johnstone River. At the end of 1879 and 
the beginning of 1880, T. H. FitzGerald, after visiting 
Mossman and Cairns, decided to take up land at what 
is now called Innisfail. It is now customary to look 
upon FitzGerald as the pioneer of sugar growing in 
the far North, as indeed he was (with Spiller and 
Davidson) the pioneer of sugar at Mackay. 
G. E. Dalrymple's expedition was commissioned by 
the Government to make a careful investigation of the 
coast line from Cardwell to the Endeavour River, and 
to find, if possible, a suitable port to connect wdth the 
Palmer Goldfield. Hann's trip in 1872 had established 
the possibility of reaching the coast at what he 
thought to be the Endeavour River, but his progress 
southward was baffled by the impossibUity of taking 
horses through the mountainous and scrub-clad coun-
try. After being entangled in the scrub of the Bloom-
field and Upper Daintree Rivers he abandoned the 
attempt, 
Dalrymple, who had with him Walter Hill, the 
Government Botanist, was in a position to report fav-
262 
ourably on the fertility of the river basins, and refer 
to the harbour facilities of Trinity Inlet, 
FitzGeraJd's Choice 
Although Cairns was established as a port for the 
Hodgkinson goldfield in 1876, it was not tUl the latter 
end of 1879, that the Brisbane press announced the 
retum of T. H, FitzGerald from a trip along that coast 
from the Daintree River to the Johnstone, when he 
must have contacted most of the timber-getters who 
were engaged in cedar-getting on all the rivers from 
the Bloomfield to the Johnstone. His choice of the 
Johnstone River was easily understood. It was acces-
sible by sea for small steamers, and had been specially 
referred to in Dalrymple's report in glowing terms. On 
the other hand. Cairns presented a mangrove foreshore 
and a comparatively useless-looking flat to the moun-
tain foot, and there was little indication of the fer-
tility of the valleys of the creeks, or the volcanic sofl 
of Green Hill. Although he did not say so, FitzGerald 
probably saw what the Chinese were doing at Hop 
Wah; and, if he went to the Mulgrave, it would be in 
his own boat to Redbank Landing, and thence to River-
stone. 
Hambledon Plantation 
But shortly after Hop Wah commenced crushing, 
another pioneer arrived in Cairns in the person of 
Thomas Swallow, and after a look at the district be-
yond Hop Wah, applications were lodged for some 
eight or nine square miles of the country comprising 
the valleys and embouchures of Skeleton, Blackfellow's, 
McKinnon and Wright's Creeks. In August 1883, the 
plantation was firmly established, a mill erected, and 
production of sugar commenced. Hambledon plantation 
has thus continued production for the past sixty years 
without intermission. Mr. Thomas Swallow was a man 
of practical ideas, and the proximity of deep water at 
the Inlet was fully availed of from the very inception, 
minimising transport costs. Later the building of the 
Mulgrave Tramway in 1897 simplified transport to the 
Cairns wharves and Swallow's wharf was abandoned. 
From the very first, Hambledon became the centre 
of social life in Cairns, and many notable visitors were 
entertained there. One interesting family connection 
was due to the marriage of Will. H. Swallow (the 
eldest son), to Caroline, younger daughter of R. A. 
263 
Kingsford, whose elder daughter Catherine was the 
mother of Sir (Jharles Kingsford-Smith. 
After the death of Thomas Swallow in 1890, his 
estate disclosed losses, principally in the building 
boom in Melbourne, and as a result Hambledon was 
sold, R. A, Kingsford being the purchaser. Swallow 
Bros, then took the plantation on lease, but the strain 
of financing was too great and in 1897 the property 
passed to the C.S.R. Co., by whom it is stiU held. 
In 1883, another company established a mill on the 
Mulgrave Valley, under J. B. Loridan and his brother, 
under conditions which proved too severe a handicap. 
In order to secure sufficient land and to find a suitable 
site for a mill that building was erected too far from 
transport facilities; and the repeated application for a 
tramline to the head of the Inlet was lost in the 
archives of the Divisional Board. The mill crushed for 
a few seasons from 1885. Loridan failed in 1887 and 
the Bank took possession; and, after working the mill 
for a few seasons, ceased operations altogether. Most 
of the staff went over to Hambledon. 
Disastrous Developments 
The sugar industry had faced great reverses dur-
ing that early pioneering period. The high price of 
sugar which tempted investment fell rapidly with the 
bonus given by Germany to the production of beet 
sugar on the Continent and, coupled with the passing 
of the South Seas Islanders legislation in 1883, caused 
a landslide in all the sugar districts in Queensland. It 
only remained for the depression of 1893 to bring final 
disaster to many who had built their hopes and spent 
huge fortunes in the industry. The report of the sugar 
commission of 1889 throws full light on the conditions 
under which the industry was struggling at the time. 
The next stage in the history of sugar at Cairns 
had its beginning with the passing of the Sugar Works 
Guarantee Act of 1893, Under that Act the land-
o"wners, particularly of the Mulgrave area, immediately 
moved to secure a Central Mill; another movement at 
Freshwater Creek failed, the lands were too heavily 
encumbered with the banks to secure a mill. But at the 
Mulgrave a number of settlers who had tenaciously 
held on through times of stress, banded together. It 
was significant that those first provisional direci;ors 
were men who had pioneered the district, one instance 
at least of men who reaped where they had sown. In 
264 
1896 the mill commenced crushing, and in 1897 the 
opening of the Mulgrave Tramway provided the neces-
sary transport facilities to the Cairns Wharf. Subse-
quent years saw the extension of this line, to Aloomba 
in 1898, Harvey's Creek in 1903, and Babinda in 1910, 
until in 1911 the whole system was purchased by the 
Queensland Government and is now part of the Sun-
shine Route to Brisbane, The opening of the Babinda 
Mill in 1915 formed a fitting coping stone to the de-
velopment of the sugar industry in the Cairns district. 
The advances made in that district are doubly in-
teresting to me whose earliest recollections of the Mul-
grave Road nearly sixty years ago are of merely a 
dray-track, mostly used by pack-horses though pass-
able at most times by sulkies and light two-wheeled 
vehicles. For this reason I have preserved many relics 
of the almost forgotten days, when the trip from 
Cairns to Gordonvale and back was never considered 
less than one day's undertaking. Even in 1893, I do not 
remember so lonely and unfrequented a road in all my 
subsequent wanderings. 
I have not referred to coloured labour in the fields, 
or to the change over in other directions from the old 
primitive methods. The sugar producing area in the 
Cairns District lies along the base of the coast range, 
extending over thirty mUes from the Barron River in 
the North to the RusseU River in the south, and it is in 
this comparatively narrow tract of coast lands that the 
three great mills of Hambledon, Gordonvale, and 
Babinda operate, unlocking wealth that is mostly put 
into circulation in its own district. 
Poetic fancy can weave many romantic settings; 
vistas of ploughed fields; kaleidascopic beauty in the 
long thin lines of sprouting cane in the furrows in the 
brown soil; of fields in waves of varying shades of 
green bending to the breeze; of cruel gaps cut in the 
standing cane; puffing engines and loaded trucks; or 
the weird pall of smoke and leaping flames of burning 
off; but the white crystals of commerce tell no story 
except to those who have traveUed through cane dis-
tricts during every season of the year. 
What further opportunities lie in the direction of 
spirit distiUing, and the utilisation of waste products 
is a consideration which belongs to the happier years 
ahead; but Cairns in its harbour, and in that self-
contained district, has in its keeping one of the fairest 
jewels of the State of Queensland, 


The origin and growth of the sugar industry in the Cairns district

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The origin and growth of the sugar industry in the Cairns district

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