Part 2 of the Cane Series

I’ll admit, before diving into this series, I hadn’t given much thought to how the sugar industry shaped our Constitution. Like many Australians, I knew the name Sir Samuel Griffith from maybe from a university crest or a street sign..but not much more. Yet, as I followed cane’s tangled path through Queensland’s past, it led me to a moment in time when sugar, race, labour, and law collided. And at the heart of it stood Griffith: barrister, Premier, and constitutional architect.

What struck me wasn’t just what he said, but why he said it....and what he hoped Australia might become.

On 31 March 1891, during the charged debates that would shape the nation's Constitution, Griffith rose to speak on a subject that had long troubled him.... the importation of black labour into Queensland's cane fields. He warned:

“...the introduction of an alien race in considerable numbers into any part of the Commonwealth is a danger to the whole of the Commonwealth... upon that matter the Commonwealth should speak, and the Commonwealth alone.”

It was a defining moment. Not just in law, but in the struggle to decide what kind of country this fledgling Australia would be.

Australia's White Australia Policy was a set of laws designed to restrict immigration by people who were not of European origin, especially targeting Asians - mainly Chinese - and Pacific Islanders. Those laws aimed to maintain Australia as a predominantly white, British-style society.

The roots of the policy trace back to the gold rush era of the 1850s, when thousands of Chinese immigrants came to Australia seeking prosperity. Their success in the goldfields primarily resulted from them taking all available ground, leading to tension with European miners and culminating in violent protests such as the Buckland and Lambing Flat Riots.

In response, the Colonies (now States) imposed taxes and other restrictions targeting Chinese arrivals. By the late 19th century, labor unions opposed low-wage competition from Chinese workers in industries including furnituremaking and market gardening, further fueling support for restrictive immigration laws.

They say Australia rode in on the sheep’s back.

But if you’d been standing in the cane fields of north Queensland, sweat in your eyes and the hum of harvesters in your ears, you might’ve thought otherwise. While the outback echoed with the bleat of woolly sheep and the click of shears, another Australia was rising... sweet, smoky, and sharp-edged.

This one rode not on the back of a sheep, but on the swing of a machete.

The machete: tool of the land - now the weapon of headlines and a handy distraction from what’s really going on.

Our country, which owes so much to the machete, is now very worried about them. And rightfully so.

So it got me thinking about sugar... its history and its contribution, good and bad, to our great nation of Australia.

It all began on a quiet afternoon in our neighbourhood park.

Cricket season had ended, leaving a vast, grassy oval entirely to ourselves.

My big brother picked up a sheet of writing paper, folded it with care, and launched it into the breeze.

That simple paper glider soared for a few glorious seconds before landing softly -  and just like that, I was hooked.

The paper glider quickly evolved.

I have a relative heading off from sunny central Queensland to further a career in the southern depths of Australian Tassie winter wonderland. I am assured that she has a great puffer coat and ugg boots and a good attitude. 

Good luck with that. It set me thinking about a time when I did the unthinkable and headed across the ditch to teach ....  

Back in the 1990’s I was asked to “ help out “ at an educational facility in the " balmy " southern city of Invercargill in New Zealand. Just a few months, over winter, to be a relief teacher for someone who was “ sick. “ I obliged.

When I fronted up, I discovered that my predecessor was on sick leave because of a nervous breakdown from teaching the classes I was taking over. Strange how that wee fact was left out. As the cool April weather closed in, the days shortened and the southerlies blew in from Antarctica, I began one of the most memorable attacks of frostbite I have ever had.

OK, chillblains, but you get my drift.

Dusty Gulch Gazette

Special Dusty Gulch Day Edition

“Blackout Special: Lights Out in the Gulch!”

By Roderick ( Whiskers)  McNibble, Chief Mud-Slinger & Power Failure Correspondent

While the nation was still reeling from the latest Prentis Penjani “liar liar pants on fire” special (charred to a crisp, as usual), and the Honklander brides saga had gone full media blackout, something much louder went BOOM in the valley.

Those two mighty Gulch Valley chimneys -  170 metres of old-school coal muscle -  came crashing down in a controlled demolition that shook the dust right off our swags.

And in true Dusty Gulch fashion, the locals have turned catastrophe into a sing-along.