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Published: November 1st 2022
Sugar Cane Harvesting Apparatus
Sugar Cane Farm, Queensland.
IMG00916We arrived in Cairns after having visited Brisbane. Cairns, then a small city on the northeast coast of Queensland, had many interesting things going on. The group visited sugar cane farms out from the town. We saw sugar cane being harvested and then transported by narrow gauge railway to the mills. The sugar cane trains were called "trams", but were locomotive hauled, using steam or diesel engines with the cane on flatcars. Sugar cane was then and now a major agricultural industry in Queensland with much of the stock sold for export.
Cains was also our base for a voyage out to the Great Barrier Reef and Green Island. Green Island is located some 17 miles off of Cairns. It is a small island and in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef. Our group of twelve went out to the island in a tour boat along with other holiday makers. Along the way we had glimpses of the coral of the Great Barrier Reef. I don't think they saw many Americans in that part of Australian in 1964, for people kept asking my mother where we were "settling". She explained we were only on a tour. (I was reminded
of a family we met aboard Matson Mariposa in 1961. They were emigrating from Texas to Australia to operate a ranch, known as a station, there.)
Green Island had a small lodge where we stayed overnight and dining facility. Mostly daytrippers went there. Electricity was provided by generators on the island that shut down at midnight. When midnight came, I heard the hum go off and the lights outside went off. The island was so small, I walked around it in a few hours. Exploring a tropical island where the mangrove trees grew right down to the water's edge. That was fun!
From Cairns the group would fly to Port Moresby, New Guinea on a Trans-Australia Airlines flight scheduled only fortnightly. Valene said the whole 1964 itinerary had been built around that one flight.
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