97% of Australia's sugar crop is grown in Queensland, and one of
the most highly developed areas is around Mackay on the Central
Coast.
Makay is also a tourist center, stepping off place for the
Barrier Reef's Whitsunday Islands.
But the living and well being of its people depends on the
150,000 acres of sugarcane grown in the districts.
On the waterfront is one of the five bulk sugar loaders now in
use at Queensland ports, loading raw sugar from the bulk storage
for dispense to the refineries of the world.
Sugar from cane crushed by the mills that operate in the
district.
Sugar grown by Makay's 1800 cane farmers.
The output of the sugar cane farmer is strictly controlled by
a system involving government edict, mill owners anticipated
requirements and the world demand for sugar.
Part only of his property is set aside for cane production, and
this is called his assignment.
Upon assignment, the work begins on the new year's crop.
The time to dig deep and loosen the comparatively shallow
topsoil lying on beds of clay.
The new crop is grown from plant cane, cane held back from the
harvest for this purpose and cut and prepared for machine
planting.
Long sticks of cane are cut into pieces approximately one foot
long, each one foot length having two nodules.
Covered with a light blanket of fallowed earth, warmed by tropic
sun, wet by monsoonal rain, each module will shoot and grow into
next year's crop.
The sugar industry of Queensland is one of the most efficient in
the world.
Subsidized by the industry. the Bureau of Sugar Experimental
Stations, spends thousands of pounds each year on research and
keeps a scientific eye on the growing crops.
Men like Arch Matthews are always on the move, helping
farmers like John Barfield get the most out of their
assignment, advising them on correct fertilization and
protection against plant diseases and pests.
But whatever the industry's problems, the pattern and the
seasons work follows the same path year after year.
The green stalks reach to the sky.
Queensland sugar crop is ripening in the sun - waiting,
waiting for the crush.
In Makay each year, at the local courthouse, representatives of
the growers, mill owners and the government Cane Prices Board,
meet to decide the date to start the crush in their district.
The crush starts on the 13th of July, only 45 days before the
cutters knives flash in the sun and the work begins.
A span of time when much of Queensland's North comes to a
standstill.
In Makay and its district, in cane growing areas everywhere,
people are waiting, waiting for the crush.
A few days before the date set the crush, the work begins.
First step is the burn.
The unproductive trash must be burned out of the crop before
the cane can be cut and sent to the mills and crushing.
By the time the crop has been crushed, manmade fire will sweep
through half a million acres of cane.
And as the smoke haze clears, the cutters move in.
When sugarcane first grew in Queensland's north in the 1860s,
cuttiing and loading of the cane was done by South Sea Island
labor.
50 years later, the white man, protecting his standard of
living, replaced this cheap labor.
Today, hand cutting is giving way to mechanical harvesting.
Some of the mills oppose to mechanical cutting of cane.
The changeover costs hundreds of thousands of pounds, investment
some mills won't make because the farmer reaps the benefit,
not the mill.
Despite objections, there is an inevitable trend in Queensland
towards the complete mechanization of the sugar
industry.
For five months of the year, the crush is on and the cane harvest
poured into the sugar mill.
The waste from the processing mills are powered by steam
generated from the waste fiber of the cane after it's crushing.
And this same steam is used for boiling the sugar syrups.
Byproducts from the crushing include treacle, syrup, and
molasses which in turn makes industrial alcohol.
This company produces 4 million gallons of ethyl alcohol each
year from 80,000 tonnes of molasses, the residue from
Makay's seven sugar mills.
From the mills, a steady stream of trucks moving by rail and by
road, take the raw sugar to the blk terminal for loading on the
ships.
The bulk sugar terminals are shifting over a million tonnes
of sugar every year.
A plant in Makay can load a freighter in under three days, a
job once taking three weeks and 40 men.
The sugar is off to refineries all over the world and the
farmer is back to his crop.
And each year as crop follows fallow ground, the time comes
when the sugarcane ripens in the tropics sun.
A time when the people of the North are waiting for the crush.