A sweet ride.
We are still in Atherton and suffering from wifi-itis! So I have just managed to upload this one shot and then I gave up. Tomorrow we move on so perhaps it will be better then and I can catch up with some of you. Maybe! A few days ago we were north of Mossman in Far North Queensland as they say, but where the line in the sand exists between these pretend geographics like Far North, North, Whitsundays etc I have no real idea! It's just north Queensland to me. This shot of a two foot gauge sugar locomotive, appropriately named "Daintree" as that's the next town north after which one crosses the river of the same name by barge and enters the real Cape York Peninsula area (far, Far North!!!) was taken in the very small town of Miallo. It is heading south to the mill in Mossman which is the only sugar mill north of Cairns and which I now know also takes cane from the newer growing areas of the Atherton Tableland, brought down by truck.
The Mossman mill wagons differ from all other mills in having two four wheel bogies on which cane containers are loaded. This gives more flexibility as these same containers are also hauled by truck in areas not served by the cane railway network. Being around the start of September, the crush is at its peak, about half over its early July to December season. Many fields are already harvested and readied for or already planted with next season's crop.
This train will pick up consists of wagons with chopped cane from sidings on each farm. It has done one already, another just down the road with yet another group of wagons further down the track. By the time it has picked up all its scheduled loads it will be a long and heavy train. The harvest and transport of cane is a well co-ordinated operation and all cane must be at the mill within 24 hours of harvest or it starts to lose its sugar content. Very little burning of cane is now carried out. It has a number of downsides (although spectacular at night) and these days very little goes to waste. A lot of the left over leaves are ploughed back in, sold in big bags at hardware stores for garden mulch or used with other left overs as bagasse and burnt in the mill's boilers. The smell of sugar syrup that pervades the air around the mills is not one to be forgotten, a special sweet aroma of a major industry. On the other hand the left over black mill mud from the crushing and crystallisation process is at the other end of the smell spectrum but is a great fertiliser which is dumped in the fields and ploughed in.
A sweet ride.
We are still in Atherton and suffering from wifi-itis! So I have just managed to upload this one shot and then I gave up. Tomorrow we move on so perhaps it will be better then and I can catch up with some of you. Maybe! A few days ago we were north of Mossman in Far North Queensland as they say, but where the line in the sand exists between these pretend geographics like Far North, North, Whitsundays etc I have no real idea! It's just north Queensland to me. This shot of a two foot gauge sugar locomotive, appropriately named "Daintree" as that's the next town north after which one crosses the river of the same name by barge and enters the real Cape York Peninsula area (far, Far North!!!) was taken in the very small town of Miallo. It is heading south to the mill in Mossman which is the only sugar mill north of Cairns and which I now know also takes cane from the newer growing areas of the Atherton Tableland, brought down by truck.
The Mossman mill wagons differ from all other mills in having two four wheel bogies on which cane containers are loaded. This gives more flexibility as these same containers are also hauled by truck in areas not served by the cane railway network. Being around the start of September, the crush is at its peak, about half over its early July to December season. Many fields are already harvested and readied for or already planted with next season's crop.
This train will pick up consists of wagons with chopped cane from sidings on each farm. It has done one already, another just down the road with yet another group of wagons further down the track. By the time it has picked up all its scheduled loads it will be a long and heavy train. The harvest and transport of cane is a well co-ordinated operation and all cane must be at the mill within 24 hours of harvest or it starts to lose its sugar content. Very little burning of cane is now carried out. It has a number of downsides (although spectacular at night) and these days very little goes to waste. A lot of the left over leaves are ploughed back in, sold in big bags at hardware stores for garden mulch or used with other left overs as bagasse and burnt in the mill's boilers. The smell of sugar syrup that pervades the air around the mills is not one to be forgotten, a special sweet aroma of a major industry. On the other hand the left over black mill mud from the crushing and crystallisation process is at the other end of the smell spectrum but is a great fertiliser which is dumped in the fields and ploughed in.