The NSW sugar industry was based on smallholdings rather than the plantations that predominated in Queensland. The pioneer cane farmers had great ingenuity in developing cane-crushing devices but their attempts to produce sugar for sale were small scale and the end product too variable to be profitable or edible. There were over fifty small, grower-owned…

Cane fields have been part of the landscape in Northern NSW for more than 100 years. Back in the 1860s, a glut of maize combined with high sugar prices led many farmers to replace maize with sugar cane. The “sugar rivers” (Clarence, Richmond and Tweed Rivers) came to be looked upon as the most prosperous…

Before 1957 fire fighting services in Yamba were limited by the landscape. The area between the Harwood ferry crossing and Yamba encompassed cane fields and large expanses of bush and swamp, criss-crossed by channels and narrow dirt tracks, all of which impeded any rapid response to fires. Frequent bushfires in the Yamba township area over…