Summary

This collection contains various photographs pertaining to sugar mills in North Queensland and sugar cane labourers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In its early years the sugar cane industry required cheap labour and so Islander labourers from three Pacific archipelagos - Bismark, the Solomons and New Hebrides (now known as Vanuatu) - were recruited. Sugar cane plantations expanded along the Burdekin and Herbert Rivers in the 1880s. The old plantation method of sugar cane farming was gradually replaced by small farming, and South Sea Islanders remained the core of the field labour force in the sugar industry until 1906. The descriptions below are taken from the initial headings for each photograph.

The contents of the Pioneer Sugar Mills Archive can be read in conjunction with this archive (see Related URLs).