Home ›
Drive any road out of Mackay and you are soon among cane — the tall green fields that have defined the region for well over a century and earned it the title of Australia’s sugar capital.
Why here
The coastal plain around Mackay has the combination sugar cane loves: fertile soil, high rainfall and a long, hot growing season. From the nineteenth century that natural advantage built an industry, and with it much of the region’s wealth, its towns, and the handsome heritage architecture of the city centre.
The harvest season
The cane harvest, through the cooler middle of the year, is the region’s great seasonal event. The mills fire up, cane trains run on their narrow-gauge networks across the district, and the air carries the distinctive smell of crushing. For a visitor it is an atmospheric time to be here — the working landscape at full tilt.
Cane trains and mills
One of the region’s quiet novelties is the cane railway — hundreds of kilometres of narrow-gauge track that carry harvested cane to the mills. Give way at the level crossings in season; the little trains have right of way and are part of local life.
Beyond raw sugar
The industry today reaches past raw sugar into refined products, renewable energy from cane by-products, and research. It remains a major regional employer and a cornerstone of the local economy — and the reason the countryside around Mackay is such a vivid, cultivated green.
For the other pillar of the regional economy, see resources and the Bowen Basin.
Industries › Sugar