HERITAGE LISTING FOR RELICS OF MACKAY’S SUGAR BOOM

A surviving stone and gravel causeway and wharf site from the historic Mackay sugar industry has been added to the Queensland Heritage Register.

Acting Climate Change and Sustainability Minister Annastacia Palaszczuk welcomed the listing of the Habana Tramline Causeway and Wharf Site by the Queensland Heritage Council.

“Historically sugar has been one of our most important agricultural commodities and the Habana Tramline Causeway and Wharf Site provides important evidence of the sugar boom that occurred in the Mackay district during the early 1880s,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

“The plantation system dominated Queensland’s sugar industry with landowners running large properties and building their own sugar mills to crush the cane.”

Member for Whitsunday Jan Jarratt said the one kilometre causeway and tramline were built in the 1880s across tidal flats to the wharf site on Constant Creek.

“They were built by South Sea Islander labour to serve the Habana Sugar Mill, a plantation mill owned by well-known public and sugar industry figure Edward Maitland Long,” Ms Jarratt said.

“South Sea Islanders, who were known as Kanakas, made a major contribution to Queensland’s early sugar industry, performing almost all of the field work to produce the sugar.”

Ms Palaszczuk said the Habana Tramline Causeway and Wharf Site were identified as part of the statewide heritage survey.

“This place provides rare surviving evidence of the a large construction project undertaken with South Sea Islander labour before legislation barred them from construction work on plantation roads and tramways,” she said.

“It is hoped that heritage listing will help conserve this element of Queensland’s history now and for future generations.”

The Queensland Heritage Council is the state’s independent peak body on heritage matters and determines what places are entered in the Queensland heritage register.

Places that are entered in the heritage register are considered of importance to Queensland’s history and are protected under heritage legislation.

Fast Facts

·12 mills opened near Mackay during the early 1880s, including at Habana on the plantation of Long and Robertson.

·The Colonial Sugar Refinery (CSR) opened a large mill at Homebush in 1883

·By 1884, 19,320 acres of cane were being cultivated in the Mackay district under the plantation system.

·South Sea Islanders began arriving in the Mackay district from 1867, and by 1875 there were about 1700 in the area, comprising 45 per cent of the total population.

·Over 2,000 Islanders still reside in the Mackay region.

28 May, 2010
MEDIA CONTACT: 3239 0824