Sugar Country

For some weeks now we’ve been driving through sugar country. As we’ve made our way south from Cooktown, in the areas of flat land that lie between the ocean beaches and the spectacular jagged peaks of the Great Dividing Range, lie square mile after square mile of cane fields. Alongside these fields are networks of narrow gauge rail lines that link the fields with the nearest sugar mills. The mills can be viewed from vast distances across the horizon as they spew remarkable quantities of steam and smoke into the air.

The first mill we came across was in Mossman. We followed the train tracks (which run along the main roads of the town) towards the mill, hoping there might be a way of seeing inside its imposing steel walls. There wasn’t. It was at this stage that I began to wonder about the processes that produce the sickly sweet substance we call sugar from the many hectares of cane fields we were passing each day.

It is harvesting season. The cane fields are either fully grown, or have already been harvested and are either lying fallow or sprouting shoots from the cane that has been replanted in them. The days of burning the fields before harvesting are, for the most part, long gone. Mechanical harvesters have eliminated the need to clear the fields of snakes, rodents and other dangers to generations of cane cutters.

At South Mission Beach we spotted a notice advertising ‘sugar factory tours’ at nearby Tully. I finally had the opportunity to satisfy my own curiosity, and build an “educational experience” into this part of the journey (otherwise dominated by ocean beaches and tropical islands)!

The eight-hour journey from the arrival of sugar cane at the factory – where it is tipped into a shredder – to the production of raw sugar is a fascinating one. It involves rolling the cane to extract liquid, followed by a crystallisation process and then the centrifugal separation of the sugar crystals from liquid (which produces molasses). What was even more fascinating was the manner in which every by-product in the process is recycled or renewed. The fibrous material left from the sugar cane is burned in the boilers to power the factory (and feed back additional power into the electricity grid). The ash is given back to the cane farmers to fertilise their fields. Most of the molasses is exported, but about 30 percent is also used as fertiliser. Interestingly, the Tully factory is wholly owned by a Chinese company, and all of the raw sugar it produces is exported to Asia. We feel very fortunate to have, in our possession, exclusive little parcels of freshly produced “Tully sugar” – used one teaspoon per day for my morning coffee!  

Had Ryan been attending school this term, he would have been completing a major assignment on sustainability. My hope is that the lived experience of a production process such as this will hold at least equal educational value for him and his brothers. One of the unquantifiable questions of our trip is how much the boys are learning through each of the many new experiences they are having, and how this compares with the learning they are missing through being absent from school for a term.

This part of the boys’ education is over, and it’s time to get back to the ocean beaches and tropical islands. Tomorrow we embark on a three-day cruise on the yacht “Silent Night” for a tour of the Whitsunday Islands!