The early history of Macknade Plantation and Mill

Neame’s Macknade Mill acquired as a working concern by CSR, 1896. (Source: Hinchinbrook Shire Council Library Photographic Collection)

Macknade Mill reached its 150^th year anniversary in August 2023. The sugar industry of the Herbert River district has much to thank its founders for. The founders were English gentlemen Arthur and his younger brother Frank of Macknade Estate, Faversham.

The enduring legacy of the Neames is:

1.      Successful sugar cultivation on the Herbert

2.      The establishment of cultivation of sugar by small farmers

3.      Small farmer representative body (the predecessor of today’s Herbert River Canegrowers)

4.      Italian immigration and small farming

Of course, this must be balanced with two other less laudable consequences of colonization:

1.      The dispersal of the Indigenous owners from the land on which the Neame brothers would grow cane

2.      The importation of Melanesian indentured labourers to cultivate that land

The legacy and consequences of the Neames' incursion into the Valley would change the landscape and demographics irreversibly.

We know so much about Macknade Plantation and Mill, founded on the Traditional Lands of the Warrgamay, Nywaigi and Bandjin/ Biyaygiri peoples, because of a diary written by Arthur, The Diary of Arthur Neame, 1870-1897 and official correspondence and records held in the Queensland and National Archives and the CSR Archives held at the Noel Butlin Archives ANU, Canberra. I took a deep dive into the story of Macknade Plantation and Mill when I researched my doctoral thesis: Small sugar farmer agency in the tropics 1872 -1914 and the anomalous Herbert River Farmers’ Association

Frank, who was two years younger than Arthur, seemed to hold onto his sense of class privilege more strongly than Arthur who despite his strong fraternity with fellow planters was very much at home in the Valley and was not above calling in on small farmers on his journeys from one plantation to another.^[1] As the older brother he was also more hands on when it came to the work on the plantation and he was of more robust health than Frank. Reading his diary, it’s hard not to like Arthur and it is hard to reconcile him with the prevailing attitudes which found him considering the local Indigenous people “treacherous and cunning” and the indiscriminate retribution exacted of those Indigenous people who killed the Conn couple as having a “wonderful effect”.[2]  

We first meet the brothers shepherding on a sheep station in western Queensland.^[3] Shepherding on a pastoral station belonging to an acquaintance of the family was the accepted way of gaining colonial experience for new-chums.

They travelled to Australia on the same ship as brothers Edwin Sheppard and Onslow Frederick Waller whom they had known previously because the Wallers had lived near Faversham. Unlike many absentee and speculative selectors who took up land in the Herbert Valley, the Neames came and explored the Valley first. On their second visit to the Valley in May 1871 (after their first visit to the Valley earlier in the same year accompanied by James Mackenzie of Gairloch Plantation Mill, had been unsuccessful^[4]) they selected their initial 1 280 acre block after climbing a tree in order to better survey a suitable piece of land.^[5] Their selections taken up in partnership with the Waller brothers were on the north side of the river which was bounded by two watercourses, the Herbert River and the Anabranch, and the ocean.

The Neames named their selection after Macknade from where they originated. Macknade Plantation and Mill was the third planation and mill established. The first was Gairloch by the Scottish Mackenzie family. The second was Bemerside by Ferrand Haig, together with Henry Robert William Miles. In his memoirs, planter Arthur talked primarily of Haig with whom he seemed to have had a genuine friendship which continued after Haig had to relinquish Bemerside. Aristocratic Miles married Frank and Arthur’s younger sister Mary in 1882.

Arthur recorded that:

I have laid out the plantation so that each block measures ten acres, the road around each being 15ft. in width, a block on the river bank is reserved for the mill house, and most of the buildings for the men, the overseers and the staff, and cottages for the married people will be around this block.^[6]

This arrangement was customarily determined by status with different ethnic groups housed separately and designated specific roles. The housing of different Melanesian groups discretely was necessary given inter-tribal violence which was not infrequent on the plantations of the Herbert River. ^[7]

Neame's residence on Macknade Plantation, Ingham Queensland, circa 1881. (Source: State Library of Queensland. Unidentified. (2004). APO-22 Album of Views of Townsville and Herbert River. Image number: 100170)

The erection of the mill and all the requisite buildings, the clearing of the land, and the initial plantings and cultivation on Macknade Plantation provided employment for both white and Melanesian labourers. White workers helped Arthur construct the buildings and erect the machinery but he found drunkenness a recurrent problem. The arrival of the sober Scandinavians was welcomed. One of the immigrants who worked for him and of whom he spoke in glowing terms was Swedish immigrant, August Anderssen. As Arthur recorded, Anderssen claimed that he owed all his later good fortune to the start Arthur gave him, but Arthur demurred saying that August “really owed it to his own hard work & intelligence.”^[8] 

The willingness of the Neames and others to allow new immigrants to work their holdings was to an extent self-serving. They cleared the land and planted food crops required by the plantations while also providing the white, skilled labour required by the planters. Nevertheless, this was an opportunity that gave the new arrivals the wherewithal to take up selections of their own. The open-handed treatment given to these immigrants—providing equipment, often even a rudimentary hut to live in—led them to regard the Neames favourably.

The mill first crushed in 1873 and made 140 tons of sugar from 70 acres of cane.^[9] The mill, imported from Glasgow, had a 20-horsepower capacity and was described as “a first-class plant and mill replete with all the modern improvements.”^[10] It had larger and heavier rollers than either the Bemerside or Gairloch Mills which gave it a much greater capacity to crush heavier crops. ^[11] The installation of an electric plant in the mill house enabled crushing around the clock. By 1875 there were 210 acres under cane and the capacity of the mill had been upgraded. The prospects for both planters and settlers in the Valley in that year were forecast as being “exceedingly bright.”^[12]

A significant feat achieved by Haig and Arthur was the construction of a large sugar store shed on a sand bank at the mouth of the Herbert River. The pair named it Dungeness after Dungeness in the Strait of Dover, England.^[13] From there, their bagged raw sugar was transported by steamers to southern markets and refineries.

Dungeness, described as “a miserable, low-lying dead-and-alive-place,” circa 1881. (Source: Hinchinbrook Shire Council Library Photographic Collection) 

The Neame brothers were not only hard workers but also prudent. They invested in improved facilities for their mill and employed good cultivation techniques. They also divided the plantation work according to their skills. Arthur by his own admission was not good at the bookwork and so Frank took responsibility for correspondence and the accounts. Onslow Waller looked after the stock and did the butchering. Edwin Waller was responsible for the cultivation, while Arthur superintended fieldwork and work in the mill house and much else. In the absence of a reliable doctor he did all the doctoring on the plantation with the aid of a medical manual. They considered themselves benevolent and enlightened employers. Arthur recorded that he “took a lot of trouble to see that the boys (Kanakas) were well cared for, and knew every boy by name, even when there were nearly 150 on the place.”^[14] Later, on their return to the Valley in 1886, the Neames were proactive in the face of the dearth of Melanesian labour. They procured Chinese, Malays (Malaysians and Indonesians) and Japanese labourers and offered tenancy arrangements.

Melanesian workers at Macknade and overseer Mr E.L. MacDonald. Their daily regime was ruled by the clock and the bell, n.d. (Source: Hinchinbrook Shire Council Library Photographic Collection)

The financial arrangement with the Wallers dissolved in 1879. That the Wallers had not been able to contribute any funds further than their original investment of £4 000 was one of several issues that caused the relationship to break down. Despite new, powerful machinery, a reliable, sober labour force, and the latest technology, Arthur admitted candidly that “had it not been for father’s help we should have become bankrupt and lost everything.”^[15] By 1878 their father had advanced them £12 000. The Neames kept the mill and all the plantation lands on the north side of the river while the Wallers took land on the southern side of the river. ^[16] The Wallers did not leave the Valley but transferred a former Gairloch plantation house to their property, Cordelia Vale, and from there invested in cattle, established a butchery, and farmed sugar cane which they supplied to the Colonial Sugar Refining Company’s Victoria Mill.^[17]

All did not go well for the Wallers, and in 1889 though still identifying as ‘sugar planters’, both were declared insolvent.^[18] Onslow remained in the Valley until his death, aged 51, in 1898.^[19] Edwin transitioned to small farming and continued to grow cane on his property, Maragen, as a contractor supplying to Ripple Creek. He continued farming for at least another decade and then left the Valley to retire in Brisbane where he died in 1935, identified as a retired sugar grower rather than planter.^[20]

Both Neame brothers went back and forth to England several times and even had their parents and siblings visit them. The brothers married in England. Arthur left Frank to manage Macknade on his own when he went home to England in April 1882. During that visit he married Jessie (nee Harrison) and together they returned to Macknade three months later. Both of Arthur and Jesse’s children, Godfrey (1886) and Arthur (1888), were born in England. Two of Frank and Louisa (nee Bennet)’s children, Harold and Marjorie, were born at Macknade while Gerard was born in Surrey in 1885.^[21]

When the first local government, the divisional board, was created in 1879 the economy was controlled by the plantations. Frank was elected chairman of the divisional board while Arthur was a founding councillor as was Edwin Waller. ^[22] Frank Neame was honorary secretary, Queensland Planters’ Association.^[23]

Still looking for labour solutions to ward off the demise of the plantation system the association proposed that Italians and Germans could be encouraged to immigrate as an alternative labour supply and that its members would guarantee to provide work to Piedmontese immigrants who would arrive in 1891 on the Jumna. ^[24] Later Neames leased out land to Italians who took up 150 acres while around another 200 acres were taken up by other small farmers.^[25] They were reputed to be on good terms with their tenants, acquiescing to all reasonable requests.^[26]

The Neames were early supporters of the concept of farming by smallholders and of smallholders’ empowerment through association. founded in 1882. On the Herbert River Farmers’ Association (HRFA)’s foundation in 1882 an unsolicited letter of support was received from Frank, accompanied by a donation of five guineas.

The HRFA invited him to become president, an honour he accepted.^[27] It was not uncommon for agricultural associations to ask somebody of some community standing to preside. This would be especially useful where the formation of such an association by smaller farmers was regarded by others as audacious and ridiculous. Founding secretary Johan (John) Alm made much of Neame championing the HRFA. He wrote that as a long-time resident of the Herbert River district, a successful planter and chairman of the Hinchinbrook Divisional Board, Frank’s approval of the association and the small grower ideals dampened criticisms, for he “was so universally admired and respected by all sections of the public that they would not adversely criticise anything in which he took a leading part.”^[28] His and his brother’s patronage was valued for the weight it gave to the association’s petitions to CSR, the divisional board and governments. Alm recalled that as president, Neame pledged to do all he could to advance the causes of the association. Neame opined that cooperation amongst farmers was much needed in the Valley.^[29]

While Neame wrote a letter of support, gave a donation and accepted the honour of being patron, he may not have been able to do much else for the HRFA. Moreover, Neame and his wife left for England in late 1882 and did not return to the Herbert until 1886. In poor health, Frank returned ‘home’ at the end of 1890, dying in the autumn of 1891.^[30]  On Neame’s death his brother Arthur assumed the presidency and was president until 1893. After that W.T. White, government surveyor and dairy farmer, was the president until the HRFA handed over its objects to the Herbert River Farmers’ League (HRFL), which in turn would hand over its responsibilities to the Herbert River Farmers’ Association (today’s CANEGROWERS).^[31]

Macknade was affected by ‘rust’ disease (disease of sugar cane caused by a mite which allows infection by the fungus red rot) in 1875 and 1876 but survived due to astute management and the planting of a more rust-resistant variety.^[32] Edward Fanning, Thomas NanKivell and Sons, a company with a Melbourne business base of ships and warehouses^[33]  made their speculative advance into the district in 1880, buying Gairloch Plantation Mill which had been resumed from the Mackenzie family by the Bank of New South Wales. The company also acquired Macknade Plantation Mill (for £60 000, £30 000 to be paid up front, the rest to remain on mortgage), trading as the Macknade Sugar Company. This came about because the Neame brothers had decided to return to England in 1883.^[34] J.E. Hammick was installed as resident manager. ^[35]

Fanning, NanKivell and Sons monopolised the Herbert River Valley for a time acquiring as well as Gairloch and Macknade, Hamleigh Plantation Mill and Farnham Estate. The concentrated ownership streamlined administration and afforded the potential of efficiency through economies of scale.^[36] But their valley-wide reach was unsustainable, given that its properties were 80 percent mortgaged. Moreover, as Neame found on his return to Macknade, extravagance both in what the company had spent on the Valley plantations and the NanKivell sons on their planter lifestyle, had negated that potential.

While figures vary, the company’s properties were inarguably huge, but the ratio of land put under cane compared to unproductive land was small. In 1882 Macknade was 6 000 acres with 400 acres ready for harvesting; Knowing that all of Fanning, NanKivell and Sons’ plantations had been running at huge losses, and that the company was still heavily in debt, Frank Neame returned in 1886 to assess the situation. When negotiations to enter into a partnership failed because Fanning, Nankivell and Sons were so far in debt, the company relinquished Macknade to the Neames in lieu of the large part of the purchase money still owed. Arthur also came back to the Valley and in 1887 the Neame brothers resumed management of their plantation. Arthur attributed the debacle to over-extension on the part of Fanning, Nankivell and Sons.^[37]

The Neames were shocked with what they found on their return. Arthur recorded that cattle were camping in the cane fields which were ruined and overgrown with weeds. The mill, while equipped with good machinery, was badly laid out and the buildings in need of repair. He wrote that “no one would have believed that place had been occupied for the last two years.”^[38]

On their return to the Valley in 1887, the Neames began leasing land, and persisted with it despite the reluctance of white selectors to commit to cane growing on tenancy arrangements, preferring to own their own land. The only growers to take up their offer were Chinese.^[39] As an incentive the Neames contracted to cart the cane and, as more growers came on board, they began to lay down tramlines and provide portable horse-line for the fields. Robert M. Boyd, of Ripple Creek Plantation and Mill, also leased to tenants, and both he and the Neames would have liked to have purchased cane from more contractors but needed the divisional board to put in the infrastructure on the northern side of the river, as they could not afford to do it themselves. Unfortunately, even though a survey was carried out for a tramway on the northern side of the river in 1889 and an application made by the Divisional Board for a government loan, supported by Robert Boyd the proposal was rejected. It would not be until two decades later that CSR would install a tramway from Macknade to Elma Grove on the northern side of the river that the concept became reality.^[40]

It took them several years to get the plantation and mill back to making money. Arthur stated in his memoires that he had hoped to stay in the Valley and that his and Frank’s sons would carry on the enterprise. On Frank’s death in 1891 Arthur continued on at Macknade for another five years but then decided to sell up and return to England. His own health was deteriorating and he found that he could not find a manager whom he could trust while absent from the plantation. ^[41] Only the Neames had managed to span the two plantation phases (represented by themselves and Fanning and NanKivell), returning reluctantly to England when it was clear that the plantation mode of production had come to an end in the Valley.

The Neames sold to The Victoria Plantation and Mill, which had first crushed in 1883, and which was a venture of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR) and its subsidiary, the Victoria Sugar Company. Notwithstanding the period when the plantation mill was assumed by Fanning, NanKivell and Sons, this enterprise was a successful one, outlasting Gairloch and Bemerside, and surviving to be purchased as a still working mill by CSR two and half decades later.

With the sale of Macknade to CSR and the closure of Ripple Creek Plantation and Mill, CSR became the dominant miller on the Herbert, operating both of its mills as central mills. Victoria Mill and Macknade Mill, under CSR management, would survive all the travails that brought the other enterprises to their knees though CSR did threaten to abandon its activities on the Herbert several times.

 

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[1] Neame, Arthur. The Diary of Arthur Neame, 1870-1897 (Edited by Sydney May. Aitkenvale: Terry Lyons, 2003).78.

[2] Ibid., 48.

[3] Ibid., 4-15.

[4] Ibid., 17-23.

[5] Ibid., 17-18, 22-23.

[6] Ibid., 39.

[7] Ibid., 91.

[8] Ibid., 53.

[9] Ibid, 42-43.

[10] “The Herbert,” Mackay Mercury and South Kennedy Advertiser, April 3, 1875, 3; “The Herbert,” Brisbane Courier, October 19, 1872, 6. 

[11] Neame, 57.

[12] “The Herbert,” Mackay Mercury and South Kennedy Advertiser, April 3, 1875, 3. 

[13] Douglas R. Barrie, Minding My Business: The History of Bemerside and the Lower Herbert River District of Queensland Australia (Ingham: Douglas R. Barrie, 2003), 42-43

[14] Neame, 91, see note.

[15] Neame., 45, 92, passim; Janice Wegner, “Hinchinbrook: The Hinchinbrook Shire Council, 1879-1979” (Master’s thesis, James Cook University, 1984), 104.

[16] Neame, 86, 92.

[17] Barrie, 47, 49; “Some Northern Sugar Plantations.” Queenslander, December 31, 1887, 1071. 

[18]  “Current News,” Queenslander, March 2, 1889, 389; and Pugh, Pugh’s Almanac 1889, 100, 145, 138.

[19] “Family Notices,” Northern Miner, August 2, 1898, 2. 

[20] “Family Notices,” Courier-Mail, July 3, 1935, 1. 

[21] “Arthur Neame” and “Frank Neame,” Neame Family, accessed June 22, 2017, http://www.neamefamily.com/tree/getperson.php?personID=I1354&tree=neame; Neame, passim.

[22]  Wegner, 594.

[23] Correspondence from Frank Neame to the colonial secretary, March 29, 1889, Correspondence- inwards, Letter number 3073 of 1889, Series ID 5253, Item ID 847306, Queensland State Archives, Brisbane. 

[24] “Indented Foreign Labor,” Daily Northern Argus, July 16, 1891, 2.  The Jumna immigrants were brought to Australia under a scheme to replace Melanesian labour with European labour. See F. Galassi, Sotto La Croce del Sud Under the Southern Cross: The Jumna Immigrants of 1891 (James Cook University: Townsville, 1991).

[25] “Herbert River,” Sugar Journal and Tropical Cultivator, April 15, 1892, 50.

[26] “Herbert River,” Sugar Journal and Tropical Cultivator, March 15, 1894, 32.

[27] John Alm, Early History of the Herbert River District being "The Memoirs of the Early Settlement of the Lower Herbert and the Start and Progress of the Sugar Industry in the District, 1932/33/35” (Aitkenvale: Terry Lyons, 2002, original edition published in Herbert River Express, 11th October 1932 to 20th January 1934).39-40.

[28] Alm, 40.

[29] Alm, 40.

[30] Neame, 108, 127.

[31] “Herbert River Farmers Upon Mr. Cowley as a Representative,” Queenslander, January 19, 1889, 108; Pugh, Pugh’s Almanac and Queensland Directory 1892, 105, 108, 1893; Wegner, 627.

[32] ‘Lower Herbert,” Week, August 24, 1878, 21; Peter Griggs, “‘Rust’ Disease Outbreaks and Their Impact on the Queensland Sugar Industry, 1870-1880.” Agricultural History 69 (1995):428.

[33]  “The Gairloch Partnership Dispute,” Queenslander, June 10, 1882, 1; “Supreme Court” Brisbane Courier, May 30, 1882, 3. 

[34] Neame, 100, 108.

[35] “Supreme Court,” Telegraph, June 1, 1882, 2; Neame, 100.

[36] Peter Griggs, “Sugar Plantations in Queensland, 1864-1912: Origins, Characteristics, Distribution, and Decline.” Agricultural History 74 (2000): 609-47, 633.

[37] Neame, 108.

[38] Neame, 108.

[39] Jan Wegner, Jan, and Sandi Robb. “Chinese in the Sugar: A Case Study of Ingham and Halifax in the Lower Herbert District.” In Rediscovered Past: Chinese Tropical Australia, edited by Sandi Robb and Kevin Rains, (East Ipswich: Chinese Heritage in North Australia Incorporated, 2014),124; evidence of Frank Neame, Sugar Industry Commission, “Report of the Royal Commission, 1889,” 113; evidence of Robert Mitchell Boyd, Sugar Industry Commission, “Report of the Royal Commission, 1889,” 118.

[40] Wegner, "Hinchinbrook," The Tramways, 472-516.

[41] Neame, 114-15, 120.

[42] Consequently referred to as Fanning, NanKivell and Sons. The spelling of the NanKivell name varies. See de Vries, Blue Ribbons, Bitter Bread, 343 endnotes Chapter 1, fn1.