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Start for Maryborough—A colonial conveyance—A drive
through the bush—Mosquitoes—A
bush inn—We reach Maryborough—The
sugar-cane country—Alford sugar-estate—Method of
cultivation —Yengarrie
factory—Mode of manufacture—The cheap labour
question—Kanaka recruiting—Burning questions of the day—
Class antagonism.
After we had spent a very pleasant week with.
Ching, during which, my constant consumption of
dugong oil considerably increased my weight, it
became necessary for us to think of making a
start, as my companion's leave
would soon expire. We had some
good shooting, and enjoyed several exhibitions of
the marvellous skill and wonderful accuracy of aim,
and dexterity of the black fellows, with their
boomerangs and spears. I bagged numbers of bronze-wing
pigeons, black cockatoos, parrots, and rabbits on
Woody island; but we had to go, and from a
neighbouring German settler, Ching managed to secure the
loan of a spring-cart.
On the 20th March, wo bade adieu to our kind
host, his dusky retainers and bronzed assistants,
and plunged into the forest.
Never shall I forget that day!
It was real downright torture, from start to
finish. Our conveyance, by some inexplicable
misdirection of meaning, or grim cynical satire, was denominated
a spring-trap.
Anything more approaching to the condition of
utter and uncompromising springlessness could not
be conceived. It took a quarter
of an hour's hard work pulling,
lashing, and objurgating, to get our horse to
start, and when he did start his chief tendency was to
stop again. For full eight hours did that wretched
animal make a miserable pretence of dragging our
cart, over a bush road, which
more resembled the site of some
ancient village built in the primitive style on
piles, than anything else. The village had disappeared,
but the piles remained. At every yard we went bump
over a stump, smash over a snag, souse into a
hideous mud-hole, or crash
against a prostrate log, till every
individual muscle and joint, and bone and sinew ached
again. Then the mosquitoes! It mattered not that
we tore branches from the trees, and wildly
thrashed each other, and them,
in the extremity of our agony.
The dead lay piled in the bottom of the spring^cart,
but still legions of indomitable
blood-suckers—envenomed kinsfolk and avengers of the slain—would
come trooping on, till faint from loss of blood,
hoarse with vituperation,
utterly disjointed and demoralized—
we hailed the welcome streak of light in the distance,
—that told us of a break in the forest. "When we
emerged into the open, got on the telegraph track,
and felt the fresh wind" playing
on our fevered brows, we left
our scourges behind us, and, save the jolting, got
on tolerably well.
About five miles from Maryborough we came upon
a pretty winding creek, with a neat rustic bridge
spanning the stream, On the further bank we descried a
public-house, and as the storm-tossed mariner
hails the friendly beacon, so
from our souls did we long for a
drink. Accordingly we redoubled our frantic endeavours to infuse some motion into our jaded liorse,
and made for The Sawyer's Arms, into which blessed
haven we staggered, and in faint voices gasped for
beer. Such was my first experience of bush travel:
I fervently hoped it might have been the last. How
I longed for the stately elephant, the
once-despised palkee; even the
"ferocious dhoolie," or a bhylee,
would have been a God-send. Anything better than
that murderous spring-cart.
Maryborough presented the usual incongruous jumble
of mean huts, paddocks full of charred stumps,
squat public-houses, imposing
weatherboard stores with gaudy
signs, and all the quaint, broadly marked contrasts and contradictions of a
thriving colonial town. There
were not wanting many evidences of progress,
industry, and wealth. The townspeople seemed to be
an active, energetic, pushing community. One or
two of the hotels and churches,
the court-house, and several of
the chief stores, were quite equal to kindred
structures in the metropolis. There was a handsome
well-laid-out reserve, for a botanic garden, in
the heart of the town, and a
considerable amount of small shipping in the river.
I was anxious, however, to get out to the sugar
plantations, and receiving a hearty and cordial
invitation from a " brither Scot," Farquhar by name, I bade
my companion good-bye, and started for Alford
sugar- estate, accompanied by my
kindly and courteous host.
Alford stands on a fertile eminence, overlooking a
series of fat lowlands, splendidly cultivated, and
bounded by the muddy, sluggish stream, which gives
its name to the town. The house is nicely situated
in the midst of a well kept
garden. It is comfortably built.
The walls inside are decorated profusely with
curios from the South Sea Islands. Farquhar was
one of the first planters to import Kanakas from
the archipelago of the Pacific. In the verandah,
a comfortable hammock depends from the rafters.
The miseen scene reminds me very much of
an Indigo planter's bungalow. It
is a truly tropical picture.
Cane in all directions; the air sultry and still, and
floods of bright sunshine touching up the rolling
billows of green sugar-cane with points and
flashes of gold and emerald,
till the whole valley by the river
seems like a scene transported bodily from Aladdin's
garden of delights. The horizon is bounded, at no
great distance, by the gloomy bush lines; the
river winds sluggishly along its
muddy channel; the farther bank,
draped with tropical creepers and matted scrub,
in deep shadow; and the buildings and high chimney-
stalks of Eaton Yale, Alford, and the Central
factory up the river, bold and
distinct against the skyline.
It is a rich valley indeed. The soil is a deep, dark
mould, easily worked, and the crops are simply
magnificent. Notwithstanding a severe and long-continued
drought, the cane is luxuriant, and the planters
had every expectation of a good
out-turn. It was now the slack
season. Manufacture has been finished, and
planting was nearly over.
The canes are planted in rows, on ridges thrown up
by the plough, or, where the undulations are too
steep, on banks earthed up by
the coolies. The rows are from
five to six feet apart. The cuttings from which
the sowings or plantings are made are laid on the ridge
about a foot apart, slightly sloping, and the
first shoots appear in from five
to six weeks after planting. In
the rich bottoms the cuttings are laid in the
hollow^, and then earthed up from the ridges;
in any case the "stools" are all earthed up
about the roots, when the plant
gets about knee high. The fields
are kept carefully cleaned between the
rows, and whep the dry leaves begin to accumulate, these
are all stripped off and laid regularly
between the lines of plant. This is technically called
trashing."
Cane which has been planted early, say in August,
will, under favourable circumstances, be ready to
cut in the month of August
following; but if planted in
December or January, and up to the middle of April,
it will not be cut till the following August twelve
months ! thus taking, roughly, a year and a half
to come to maturity, Less than
4½ feet of clear cane is never
cut, and it not unfrequently cuts out in lengths of over
10 feet, thicker than a man's wrist. When cut, the
'Hrash'' is collected and burnt, the "stools"
earthed up by the plough, and
the crop allowed to stand for a
second cutting. In the richest parts of this valley
as many as five and six crops are got from the one
planting, In the higher lands, farther back from
the river, new crop is put in every third or
fourth year.
The varieties of cane are very numerous, the most
common being the Bourbon, the Gingham, the long
yellow, the China straight cane, and several dark-
coloured kinds from Java. The favourite kinds are
called Rapol and Mera, both quick-growing
varieties. Experiments are still
being made with all sorts, but
those enumerated above are perhaps on the whole the
best.
Bust attacks the plant occasionally, arid very unfrequently the borer. Floods are of frequent
occurrence, and cause great
loss, whilst a year of drought will
retard the growth of the plant. But, on the whole,
the industry is in a flourishing state, and a vast
amount of capital is now employed in the different
Works. The average yield is about a ton to a ton
and a half of manufactured sugar
per acre. As much as four tons
an acre have been produced from some lands
on this estate, but such an enormous yield is, of
course, very exceptional.
At Eaton Yale, and on some other estates, the old
method of manufacture is still adopted. The juice
is expressed, boiled in a
battery of pans, pkced in the
vacuum pans, and then put through the centrifugals;
very much the same treatment as is adopted at Rosa,
the great sugar-works of the North-West Provinces,
near Shajehanpore, in India. The greatest
establishment in the whole of Australia, however, is at Yengarrie, some miles up the river. More than a
quarter of a million has been
expended on the purchase, of the
patent, and on the works here, and through the kindness
of Mr. Cran, one of the partners, we were shown
all over the vast pile of buildings.
The process here pursued is that whioh has been
patented in France, and is called the "lime
process." It is the most
complete and least wasteful method yet
invented, and only in France, by the original patentees,
and here, by Messrs. Tooth and Cran, is it yet in
operation. The Yengarrie firm have several
plantations of their own, but
they also manufacture the juice of
any other plantation on the river which likes to send it
to them.
The plan pursued is as follows:—
The juice is expressed by the common rolling-mill. It is then mixed with lime-water from slaked stone-
lime. The lime prevents the juice fermenting, and
enables it to be kept for an indefinite time
without losing any of its
saccharine strength. When mixed it
is run into large punts, containing 5000 gallons each,
and these are taken up the river to the Yengarrie
wharf, where there is an elaborate and costly
pumping apparatus for lifting
the liquor up to the factory. The
juice from the Yengharrie home plantations is forced
through pipes from distances varying from two to
five miles. The pipes are
carried over hill and dale, through
bush, and swamp, and creek; there are mud-traps and
air-valves at intervals, by which the pipes can be
at any time cleaned, and the
whole arrangements are as
complete as human skill and ingenuity, backed by
capital, could make them. The forcing-pump machinery
is a beautiful specimen of iron-work, and both it
and the crushing machinery (huge
masses of metal perfectly
finished) have all been made close by, at the Maryborough foundry. Better
work could not be turned out in
England.
When juice from other growers is sent in for
manufacture, the arrangement is as follows :—The liquor is
gauged by Baume's saccharometer, 10° being taken
as the standard of density, and
the latest Sydney and Melbourne
sugar-market quotations as the standard of
price. A pound of raw manufactured sugar is allowed
for every gallon of liquor. Thus 5000 gallons of
liquor, at a density of 10° Baume, would be
accepted by the Yengarrie
factory as representing 5000 lbs. of
raw manufactured sugar, and the grower would be
paid at current market-rates accordingly. Any
increase or decrease of the
density, above or below 10°, would
be increased or decreased rateably in the price. This arrangement seems fair, and, at all events, it
has
pleased both parties hitherto.
The vastness of the. Yengarrie works bewildered
me. The process is, of course, a long and
intricate one; but the salient
features in it, I believe, are
these:—
The liquor, mixed with lime, is treated with carbonic
acid gas, made in a lime-kiln on the grounds, as
the first operation; this turns
the lime into carbonate of lime;
and, after numberless operations, the lime is got
rid of by steam-pressure. In our crude Indian way,
half the saccharine matter is lost by
fermentation. By the lime
process all fermentation is made an impossibility, and the full amount of saccharine
matter is obtained. Not an atom
is wasted. The sugar made here
is beautifully white, but the crystals are small, as
the trade will, not buy large-grained sugar. The
workshops are replete with every modern invention—
lathes, rolling and planing machines, machines for
drilling and punching; in fact, everything that is
necessary for making and repairing any part of the
vast array of machinery which is used.
Animal charcoal for refining the sugar is manufactured
on the spot, and numerous lines of tramway rails
lead far into the bush in every direction, for bringing
in the enormous quantities of firewood in daily
use, and for taking away the
refuse lime and waste of crushed
cane, which, when mixed and allowed to rot,
makes one of the finest manures in the world.
The managers on the estates are fine, manly young
fellows. They get about 2001, a year, with free
house and rations; overseers
about 801, a year; and tho
skilled white labourer from 25s. to 30s. a week, with
food. The most of the field-work is done by Kanaka
boys, from the New Hebrides, Solomon, Santa Cruz
and Loyalty Islands, in the South Seas.
The importation of these aboriginals has given great
umbrage to the white immigrants, and their
continued employment or
non-employment has been one of the
burning questions of the day. The whites argue that
they have left home and friends, seduced by the
representations of the Queensland government, that
they would find constant work at enhanced rates,
cheap food, a grand climate, free institutions,
and a glorious future of wealth
and ease. Free institutions they
certainly get. Manhood suffrage is the rule here.
There is no property qualification or education test.
Six months' residence gives you a vote.
The fact is, for an honest, industrious, patient
working man there is always employment here. He
can earn good wages, and save money, and
eventually own his own house and
garden, and certainly never know
want. But what is the fact? From my own
observation, which, though short, has been searching
and impartial, I do believe that a more
improvident, lazy,
self-indulgent, impertinent set of fellows never
cursed a colony with their presence than those agitators
and radicals, who falsely call themselves the
leaders of the working men,
organize themselves into leagues and
unions, and are the originators of the present cry
against cheap or abundant coloured labour. Their
one object is to keep away capital seemingly, and
prevent the colony from going ahead. They will
not work; they are
irreclaimable loafers; and their chief
aim is how to secure a wage that will keep them in
grog and tobacco, and administer to their sensual
appetites, without the penalty of giving an
equivalent of fair labour in
return. Be it distinctly understood,
vii.] "kanakas and polynesian labour act.
I do not mean tlie honest, hard-working, intelligent
labourer. I only stigmatize the clap-trap orators,
who try to manipulate the vote
of the working man.
Capitalists, too, these men conveniently forget—at
least, they ignore the fact—have left home and
friends, have surrendered many
of the comforts and associations that make life worth having, and they
certainly did not come so far
and risk so much merely that a
mob of worthless democrats should batten on their
wealth, grow fat on the results of their energy and
skill, and requite them with insolence and
insubordination. In fact, at present the relative positions of
classes here are turned upside down. "Jack is as
good as his master and a great deal better." On
some of the plantations where
only white labour was used,
prostitution and drunkenness prevailed. The men
were insolent, disobedient, and lazy; and were a gold-
field discovered in the vicinity, or should the
whim take them, they would be
off, bag and baggage, at a
moment's notice, leaving your crop to rot, and you to
go to ruin, for all they cared.
Under the Polynesian Labour Act, the Kanakas are
recruited on the islands, upon a three-years'
engagement to work on the plantations. They get a free
passage to Queensland and back, a year,
and a certain quantity of
clothing; and are housed, fed, and
have medical attendance at their employers' expense.
No doubt they require constant looking after, as
they are lazily inclined; but in
good hands they are sober,
tractable, and intelligent; and I am convinced the
sugar industry would never have attained its present
.proportions without them.
Another burning question, much debated among the
higher classes when I was at Maryborough, was the resumption of squatting lands. On tlie one hand, the
squatters say that wool and stock are indubitably
the staples of the country, and
that they have contributed in no
small degree to make the colony what she has
become; that if they have no security of tenure, capital
will be withheld; if their lands are resumed or
given over to the selector, they
must dispose of their stock at a
ruinous sacrifice; and that, seeing they have been
the pioneers of these great industries, have surmounted
difficulties, have taken their lives in their
hands, as it were, and put
capital, energy, health, comfort, their all
in their venture, they should in common fairness be
allowed to reap the fruit.
They say, moreover, that the richest lands are the
scrub lands and the lands near the coast; that
these are pre-eminently suited
for agriculture, and not suited
for squatting; and that therefore these lands should
be taken up first.
On the other hand, the objectors to this view say
that the squatters have enjoyed far more than the
reasonable fruits of their work already; that
emigrants are invited out to the
country by government under
promise of getting a portion of land, but that when
they arrive here the land is not forthcoming; that they
do not want to take the fairest portion of the
runs from the squatter—he has
his pre-emptive and other
rights—but let the selector, who is willing to spend as
much capital on the land as the squatter, have an
equal chance of obtaining a
share. That the squatters do
not, man for man, employ more labour or contribute to
the expenses of government, or advance the weal of
the community in any greater degree than other
classes: so that therefore they
should not be more favoured or
protected than the selector or emigrant who wants to squatters and selectors.
farm a piece of land, and is willing to pay for it. The
squatter should certainly be reasonably
protected; but when his lease is
up he must take the usual commercial
risk of having a renewal of it refused; a higher offerer
willing to outbid him; or an enhancement of rent
required as the result of greater demand. Part/
feeling runs very high, mutual recriminations are
indulged in, classes are estranged, and so the
contest rages from bad to worse.
In the above remarks, I have
endeavoured to give the view of the planters and
squatters on the subject of labour, but I may further
on have more so say, regarding both the labour
question, and the land laws.
I do not wish to be understood as saying that there
is not a large class of honest, capable working
men in the colony, or that all
the members of Parliament are
weak and useless; but owing to the manhood vote
many of the constituencies allow the beer interest and
the professional political agitators to have, far
too much influence.
Black labour, I consider, might safely and with
reason be excluded from the towns, and only used
in plantations, and the Chinese
should be made to contribute more than they do to the expenses of
government; but that all black labour should be excluded
from a tropical country like northern Queensland
in obedience to a cry from
prejudiced and unlettered sham
working men is monstrous.
I have spoken with all classes and conditions of
people since my arrival in the colony, and the
evidences of mutual jealousy are
very painful. The majority of
the white working men have exaggerated ideas of their
own importance. They want large pay for little
work. The towns are jealous of
each other, and all cry out
for this and that improvement. In the mad scramble
for the limited amount of funds at the disposal of
government, each member asks for far more than he
can possibly get for his particular constituency,
hoping that by asking for all,
he may get possibly a fractional
part. In the words of the old Scotch proverb, "If
ye bode for a silk goon ye'll maybe get a sleeve
o't," seems to be a favourite
policy. This breeds a narrow-
minded, parochial way of looking at things. I am
really trying to be fair to the members, but I do think
there is a want of breadth, a subservience of
national and imperial to local
wants, and a jealousy and petty
rivalry between classes and localities that embitters
party warfare, and materially retards the general
progress of the country. As has been forcibly said
by a well-known colonial writer, "We are cursed
with centralization, while
commercial dishonesty and corrupt government are the dry rot of our boasted
civilization." |
