Tully Sugar Mill celebrates 100 years of cane harvesting amid floods and cyclones

Australia Broadcast Center

23-05-2025

Determined not to let back-to-back disasters crush their celebration, Australia's wettest town is preparing for its 100th sugarcane harvest.
A sour start to 2025 threatened to overshadow the sweet milestone for Tully in Far North Queensland after successive tropical lows brought months of flooding rain during the peak growing season.
Despite a significant reduction in the size of the crop, the growers say they are hopeful there's another 100 years ahead for the Tully Sugar Mill.
Over the past two weeks multiple events have been held to mark the occasion, including the development of a historical site and mural.
Tully Sugar chief executive Andrew Yu said it was a special time for the town and the industry.
"The theme of the celebration is called 'growing together for 100 years'. That's very true because without the community support, without the growers, there wouldn't be a mill."
He said every time he heard the factory noise or saw the smoke coming out of the stack it made him excited.
For canegrowers like Anthony Silvestro and Hardeep Singh this season is extra special.
Even though both are expecting lower yields on their farms south of Tully due to the floods, their spirits remained high.
"It's a good legacy what the mill has done for the district and the growers. It's been good to see that it's kept our community going," Mr Silvestro said.
Cane growing is an industry used to overcoming extreme weather, like Tropical Cyclone Larry in 2006 and Tropical Cyclone Yasi in 2011.
In 1925, Tully received more than 3,600 millimetres of rain. In 2025 it reached that figure in the first five months.
That is just 100mm shy of the total for the same period in 1950, the wettest year on record, with 7,898mm.
It is the reason the town's famous Golden Gumboot is 7.9 metres tall.
Even so, Mr Singh feels confident there are good years to come.
"I can see the mill going for 100 more years with the next generation and yeah, it's great to be a part of a good community," he said.
Sugarcane has been grown in Tully since 1865, but it was not until November 1925 the town got its own mill.
It quickly became successful — by 1927 it was the first Australia sugar mill to crush more than 200,000 tonnes in a season.
By 1931 the Tully Co-Operative Sugar Million Association Limited was formed and local canegrowers bought the mill off the government.
It remained a grower-owned co-operative until 1990 when it became a public company known as Tully Sugar Limited.
In 2011 Chinese agribusiness company COFCO took over the mill which this year expects to crush at least 2.3 million tonnes of cane.
The celebration is about more than looking back.
For Danielle Skocaj, who joined the industry 20 years ago, it was also about the future.
Now principal researcher for Sugar Research Australia (SRA), she said when she first started there were only two or three female extension officers employed by the company.
"Whereas now you look at a lot of our advisory staff — not just in SRA but other industry organisations — its researchers, technicians [have] got to be at least 50-50, if not more a female than male ratio," she said.
SRA Burdekin district manager Terry Grandshaw said both the people and the technology had come a long way since cutting cane by hand.
"We've got to remember our fathers and grandfathers, they made real step change in the industry," he said.
"I think it's really important to understand we went from hand harvesting to mechanical harvesting, to trash blanket, to green cane harvesting."
Ms Skocaj is thrilled to see the mill continue to thrive today.
"The mill is the centre of our town," she said.
"It's a large industry, employs a lot of people, and to have withstood the last 100 years for all the different challenges is something definitely worth celebrating."