FAMILIES WAIT FOR THE END
DALBEG at the end of the road 90km up the Burdekin River from Ayr is spiralling downwards.
Long grass and fallen branches litter the children’s playground. In the tennis court, the net hangs in tatters and weeds grow through the concrete. For the locals still living there, the weekend tennis parties are but a distant memory.
The days when 100,000 tonnes of sugar cane was grown on irrigated farmland at Dalbeg have gone.
Now there is just one grower who farms 3000 tonnes of cane. In total, the district now grows in the vicinity of 5000 tonnes of sugar cane.
About 900ha of land that once supported sugar cane was turned over to sandalwood production in 2010.
Vegetable farmer Sean McShane said TFS, the sandalwood company that now trades as Quintis, bought the two biggest farms in Dalbeg.
He said other farmers became concerned their Ayrbased sugar miller would stop running locomotives to Dalbeg to pick up harvested cane for processing and that they would have to truck it at their ex- pense to a siding at Millaroo.
“And so those growers sold,” Mr McShane said. “Now there is just my brother Michael and a couple of other farmers. Everyone was worried that the mill wouldn’t run a loco up here because there wasn’t enough cane,” he said.
Mr McShane said the cane train bridge over nearby Expedition Pass Creek was repaired after it had pylons knocked out in a major flood in 2008. He said with the amount of cane now grown in the district it was unlikely the miller would spend money repairing the rail bridge if it was damaged again.
“Given the amount of cane here now, they probably wouldn’t,” he said.
Making matters worse for Dalbeg and its sister commun-