Part 17 (1/2)
The old-style factory carried on its operations solely by day. The present-day factory is lit throughout with electric light, and works day and night (Sunday excepted) for five or six months, employing, according to its capacity, from 100 to 150 men. Around each factory has sprung up a small settlement of artisans, storekeepers, and others, while, under a statute pa.s.sed by the Queensland Parliament, the employees are decently housed, fed, and a.s.sured of good sanitation, their mental, moral, and financial welfare being provided for by the inst.i.tution of reading and recreation rooms, and the establishment of branches of the Government Savings Bank.
Turning to the agricultural operations, similar evidence of the evolution of the industry is to be found. Time was when a visitor could stand on some slight eminence and look over vast areas of cane, the vista unbroken save for a few trees, or the plantation roads running like ribbons through a sea of waving green. Now the prospect discloses the homes of farmers standing out amongst the cane, with all the evidences of a closely settled and thriving population. The large gangs of labourers tending the cultivation have for the most part disappeared. Instead, the farmer and his sons, with possibly one or two labourers, work side by side in the fields.
At harvest time long lines of carts drawing cane to the mills no longer make a picturesque feature in the landscape; locomotives now haul cane-trains over the hundreds of miles of narrow-gauge tramline which radiate from the factories to all points from which supplies of cane are drawn. Where but a few years back was naught but the lonely bush, its silence broken only by the lowing of a few cattle, the occasional pa.s.sing of an aboriginal stockman or a party of drovers, carriers, or a chance swagman--birds of pa.s.sage between the inland stations and the ports on the coast--towns.h.i.+ps have sprung into being, and every half-mile reveals the home of the farmer nestling among his fields of emerald green.
During the past few years, mainly owing to the satisfactory prices received for their cane, the farmers have been profitably employed.
They have learned in the school of experience that cane cultivation requires practical knowledge, and that in many cases their land needs special treatment, which they must study for themselves. Nothing has brought this fact home to the farmers more thoroughly than the work of the Sugar Experiment Station at Mackay, and the valuable reports published by the late Director, Dr. W. Maxwell.
In the early seventies the sugar-planters of Mackay awoke one morning to discover the whole of their crops destroyed, as if a fire had pa.s.sed over them. They then grew only one variety of cane, which had become diseased. Fresh varieties had to be introduced from abroad, with all the risk of introducing canes that were worthless, or, worse still, of bringing in pests or diseases. So far, sugar-cane in Queensland has been singularly and fortunately free from natural enemies. Thanks to the work of Mr. H. Tryon, the Government Entomologist, the grower readily recognises the presence of insect pests, and knows how to deal promptly with them on their first appearance.
The farmer is learning to know his cane; he studies its habits, and is quick to appreciate the good and bad effects of his operations. The a.n.a.lyses at the mills have directed his attention to the importance of cane being a good sugar-producer, and, as he is in many cases a shareholder in a factory, he is alive to the fact that weight of cane is not the only essential to success. For many years the need for securing canes richer in sugar was largely neglected all over the world, but recently efforts have been made to repeat in the case of cane the splendid results won by such men as the late Sir J. B.
Lawes and the French chemist, Vilmorin, in connection with the sugar-producing qualities of the beet. The officials at the Queensland Sugar Experiment Stations have tested fully sixty varieties of cane, including some from Papua, to discover the agricultural and milling value of each.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CAMBANORA GAP, HEAD OF CONDAMINE, KILLARNEY]
[Ill.u.s.tration: MINTO CRAG, DUGANDAN, Fa.s.sIFERN DISTRICT]
It is only natural that in an industry whose operations extend over so many degrees of lat.i.tude conditions must greatly vary. Irrigation is necessary in some districts, notably in the Burdekin Delta, which lies in a dry belt. Drainage is the prime requisite in other places.
Fertilisation varies with the soils, and information as to the latter has been compiled in a series of exhaustive a.n.a.lyses made by Dr. W.
Maxwell at the laboratory in Bundaberg. In South Queensland the cane frequently takes two years to mature, while in the extreme North fifteen months after planting it is fit for the rollers.
According to the official estimate of the Commonwealth Treasurer for 1908, 4,825 farmers were then engaged in the industry in Queensland, 917 per cent. of whom employed white labour only, the number of employees being in round figures 30,000. In 1902 the number of farmers was only 2,496, showing the rapidity with which closer settlement is taking place. It is true that of late there has been a reduction in the area under cultivation, but this is probably attributable to the tendency to make ”intense cultivation” a feature of the industry in order to solve the labour problem. Some of the larger areas under crop have been curtailed, and the reduction has not been made good by the increased settlement; but, as in the eighties those engaged in the industry found, possibly unconsciously, a remedy for the dearth of labour, so we may reasonably expect that the present difficulty in obtaining men for the ordinary work of cultivation will be met by new developments.
What does the future hold for us? Can we continue the work of building up a white nation beneath a tropical sun--a task which in many parts of the world is considered quixotic? The areas available for cane cultivation are still enormous, and, though hesitancy and doubt may for a time join hands in checking expansion, the main facts remain that there is room for the people and that there is a demand for the product. Australia, in her fiscal policy, has recognised that the sugar industry is a national industry, and our statesmen realise that it is doing for the Australian tropics what no other industry on the coastal lands has yet seriously attempted--what, indeed, no other country in the world is as yet prepared to try.
a.s.suming, as we have a right to a.s.sume, a sympathetic Australian Government, we can turn to the future with eyes full of hope. There are many directions in which we may look for the expansion of the industry. The increasing population of the Commonwealth involves an added capacity to consume the product. The field of invention in regard to the harvesting of the cane has yet to be explored and exploited. At present the cost of cutting and loading a field of cane is from eight to ten times that of harvesting an equal amount of sugar beets. Experiments are constantly being made with mechanical appliances for cutting and loading and unloading cane, and this is one direction in which Queenslanders may look forward hopefully to the time when they will not only lessen the volume of labour required, but when they will reduce the burdensome nature of the work, and place the cane-sugar industry in a position to compete successfully with the great beet-sugar industry of Europe.
Some 250,000 gallons of rum are distilled annually at Bundaberg, but we are told officially that 4,000,000 gallons of mola.s.ses go to waste every year. The conversion of this product into foodstuffs for live stock as an adjunct to the main industry would add materially to the profits.
In some sugar districts, dairying is finding a footing, and possibly the time is not far distant when a form of mixed farming will enable the cane-grower to utilise more of the by-products of his industry, at the same time rendering him more independent of unfavourable meteorological conditions. Generally speaking, improvement in the quality and quant.i.ty of the cane, intense culture, mechanical inventions, and the use of by-products are all within the bounds of possibility, and will make for further progress.
But all these things are of secondary importance compared with the need of a settled working population. Back from the coast lies a range of mountains, rising often 3,000 feet above the level of the sea.
Along and behind these mountains are excellent lands, well suited for close settlement and for the production of cereals, and the fruits and vegetables so greatly needed in the more humid areas of the littoral belt. The climate of this elevated hinterland is excellent, and the close settlement of these lands will furnish one of the safeguards of the sugar industry, seeing that a permanent population within easy reach will always be available for employment in the canefields and sugar-mills. To a large extent, the populations of the lowlands and the highlands will be mutually dependent upon each other.
In the early days of settlement in East and West Moreton and on the Darling Downs, the small selector, with no capital in many cases save a pair of strong hands, a courageous heart, and a tireless energy, made his way every year to the squatter's shearing shed. No thought had he of ”knocking down” his hard-earned cheque. Labour disputes never entered his mind. With his earnings he paid his rent and improved his land. It was men of this stamp who built up the great agricultural industry of Southern Queensland, and they and their descendants of the second and third generations are the very cream of the farmers of to-day. It is to a similar cla.s.s of settlers in the sugar districts and their hinterland that we look for the proper settlement and development of our tropical lands. And in our aspirations for a great white agricultural population we are ent.i.tled to expect the sympathetic a.s.sistance of our kinsmen in the South and of the Empire at large. For not only are we doing what we can to make a prosperous and contented people, but we are doing a great work for the whole of the white races. We are proving that the tropics can be conquered and permanently settled by people of our own race and colour; we are holding one of the gateways of the East; and we are garrisoning an important outpost of the Empire. Kipling's stirring words, written of Queensland, find an echo in the hearts of Queenslanders--
The northern stirp beneath the southern skies-- I build a Nation for an Empire's need, Suffer a little, and my land shall rise, Queen over lands indeed!
CHAPTER IV.
A HALF-CENTURY OF MINING.
The Quest for Gold a Colonising Agency.--Earliest Discoveries of the Precious Metal in Queensland.
--Port Curtis.--Rockhampton District.--Peak Downs.
--Gympie.--Ravenswood.--Charters Towers.--Palmer.--Mount Morgan.--Croydon.--Later Discoveries.--Yield at Charters Towers and Mount Morgan.--Copper Mining.--Tin.--Silver.
--Queensland the Home of All Kinds of Minerals and Precious Stones.--Mineral Wealth in Cairns Hinterland.--Copper Deposits in Cloncurry District.--The Etheridge.--Anakie Gem Field.--Opal Fields.--Extensive Coal Measures.--Railway Communication with Mining Fields.--Value of Queensland Mineral Output.--Prospects of Industry.