The passage of time has eased the pain enough to mark 20 years since the Moreton Central Mill’s last cane crush and acknowledge sugar’s place in the story of the Sunshine Coast.
Farmers, field and factory workers and all associated with the Sunshine Coast’s former sugar industry are expected to take up the opportunity to reminisce about their place in history.
Cane grower-turned-turf farmer Ross Boyle and the once-largest sugar producer in the area, Gordon Oakes, are organising an event to honour the anniversary on Saturday, December 2, from 3pm at the Tram Terminus in Mill Street, Nambour. The site is adjacent to the old sugar mill site (now the Nambour Mill Village Shopping Centre).
The family-friendly event will feature live music, with food and drinks for sale.
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All proceeds will go towards the not-for-profit Nambour Tramway Company, aiming to put a sugarcane tram back on the tracks in the hinterland town.
At 6.30pm on the day, a special screening will be held of The Last Crush film, produced to mark the closure of the Moreton Sugar Mill on December 4, 2003, and the end of an era for Nambour as the centre of the sugar industry in the area for 106 years.
Mr Boyle, who was Sunshine Coast Cane Growers Association chairman at the time, told Sunshine Coast News it probably didn’t feel like 20 years had passed – except when he looked in the mirror.
The event would be “a bit of fun” and a chance to look back fondly on an important part of the Coast’s history when many parts of the hinterland had canefields as far as they eye could see.
“It was a very well-organised and well-run industry with lots of employment and good outcomes for the area and that’s all gone,” the Rosemount Turf owner said.
“I don’t think it’s hard anymore (to talk about the mill closure). It was a sad time but there was no real anger.
“Well, there might have been a little bit of anger in certain people but the mill made a decision and that was it.
“In hindsight, I don’t know whether it would have survived a lot longer because there were many years of low prices. The price is very high now.
“The problem here was just the size of the sugar mill. It was a good cane-growing area but cane has been through a lot of issues since there.
“The problem is, Brazil and places like that grow it more economically than us because of their wage structure. Not because they’re better farmers, because they’re not.”
Just as Ross and wife Lynelle had to pivot to remain on the land the Boyle family has farmed now for more than a century, others also had to suddenly go out and find new opportunities for themselves and their families.
“I don’t know whether many people left, though I know of a couple of instances where workers did leave the area,” Mr Boyle said.
“Among the farmers – some retired, some hung on and grew a bit of cane, and there’s still a little bit grown.
“A handful of us went into completely different crops. Some put in some cows.
“Others have just fenced off their land and gone out and got a job.”
Most had “moved on in their mind”, he said, but some had struggled.
He was sure the mill closure may have led to divorce, in some cases.
Little counselling or other forms of support were offered to the farmers and workers in 2003.
“There wasn’t a lot of help for anybody after the industry closed, really,” Mr Boyle said.
“There were a few noises made, but because this is such a vibrant area and it didn’t just rely on sugar – state, federal and local governments just sort of washed their hands of it.
“If it had been a mill in an area where that was the only industry and there was no alternatives – no big tourism or other big populations of people moving to the area – I think we would have got a lot more help from governments.
“I’d say they looked at us, and went, ‘Oh well, the Sunshine Coast will survive quite well without the sugar industry, so we’ll just let it happen’.
“Time has healed a lot of wounds but there hasn’t been anything on any great scale to replace the sugar industry.
“There’s a lot of land out there that has gone, in my opinion as a farmer, to waste.
“The people who have bought these blocks and got a couple of cows running on them obviously wouldn’t agree with that and would get angry at me saying that, but that’s my opinion.”
Meanwhile, following on from a successful 10th anniversary event in 2013, the Nambour Museum is commemorating the 20th anniversary of the mill’s closure with a free public open day on October 14 from 10am-3pm.
Museum president Clive Plater OAM is expecting “a couple of hundred” people on the day for the festivities at the museum at 18 Mitchell Street, Nambour.
“The band, Sunshine Brass, band will provide musical entertainment,” he said.
“We’ll have a loco or two out of the shed in the sunshine.
“And we’ve got a new display. In the February 2022 flood, the former Moreton Mill Heritage Listed tramway lift span bridge on the Maroochy River got washed away. So, we have created a display using items that had previously been removed and placed in storage.
“We’re having an official opening of this new display at 11 o’clock. And got a few dignitaries and people we need to thank coming along to that.
“The Queensland Government commissioned an e-book that has just been completed about the history of the lift-span bridge, so a couple of their representatives are coming along.”
Mr Plater expected the open day to be a “reunion of sorts” for those formerly involved in the sugar industry, with a special oration from Wendy O’Hanlon, who grew up on a cane farm at Yandina.
“It’s 20 years since the mill closed, come December, and it’s also 30 years since the museum association came into being, so it’s a bit of a dual event,” Mr Plater said.
“You don’t have to be connected with the mill to appreciate what it did for the community.
“It was very lucky the museum association had been formed prior to the mill’s closure and, by a further stroke of luck, establishing the museum ‘next door’ to the then operating mill.
“Being next door made it easy for heavy items to be moved over to the museum – some by the mill’s own crane. Without Nambour Museum and the co-operation of Bundaberg Sugar, most of the mill’s history would have been lost.”
For information, call Mr Plater on 0408 713 093.
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