South Kolan, Platypus’s and A Grassy Stop

Saturday 20th February 2021

We had a good night sleep last night. It rained on and off. We woke up to it drizzling this morning.

We had a fair bit of reorganising to do before leaving Harvey Bay this morning.

We packed up in the rain again and set of up north.

The sights along the way

We drove about 1.5hrs towards South Kolan. Along the road we saw kilometres upon kilometres of sugar cane crop. There was also railway track after railway track, used to move tonnes of sugar cane.

Sugar cane railway

The rail system has modern narrow gauge railway systems that connect sugar mills with the surrounding areas where sugar cane is grown. The job of the railway systems is to transport the freshly harvested cane to the sugar mill for processing as soon as possible, preferably within 12-18 hours and definitely within 24 hours. The work goes on 24 hours a day and in most cases 7 days a week during the crushing season which runs for around 20 weeks or so each year.

It takes about 8 tonnes of cane to produce one tonne of raw sugar.

The scale of these railways is remarkable. There are about 4,000 kilometres of track, of which about 3,000 kilometres is main line, transporting up to 36 million tonnes of sugar cane each season. There are about 250 diesel hydraulic locomotives in use and about 52,000 cane “bins.”

The sugar mills are to be found in a 1430 km coastal strip from Childers in the south to Mossman in the north.