page_title: Oaklands Sugar Mill
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Oaklands Sugar Mill / History
caption_attribution_description: English: A portrait of Claudius Buchanan Whish.
context_page_description: Oaklands Sugar Mill is a heritage-listed remains of a former sugar cane mill at 68 Captain Whish Avenue, Morayfield, Moreton Bay Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built in 1865. It is also known as Whish's Sugar Mill Remnants. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 18 September 2009.
context_section_description: The Oaklands sugar mill operated between 1865 and 1872. The mill was built and operated by Claudius Buchanan Whish, the first sugar producer to market his produce in Queensland in commercial quantities. The mill was used to process the cane harvested from fields on his Oaklands property - much of the harvesting was performed by South Sea Islander labourers. The mill ceased production in 1872 as sugar yields were poor in the mild winter climate of southern Queensland and due to the competition of larger and better yielding plantations being established in the Maryborough and Mackay regions.
  By 1836, sugar cane had reached southern Queensland and was being grown in small plots in the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement. Experimentation with sugar cane as a viable crop was also conducted between 1836 and 1847 by a number of enterprising citizens of the colony. Trials of suitable varieties were undertaken by John Buhot in the Brisbane's botanic gardens; BHS 1995:5; Blake 2003:36).
  Sugar cultivation was pioneered in Queensland by Louis Hope who established a plantation at his Ormiston House Estate in 1862. Hope erected Queensland's first sugar crushing mill, supplied by Cook & Co. of Glasgow, on his Ormiston property on the banks of Hilliard's Creek in 1864. The first commercially milled sugar in Queensland was produced there in September that year.
  Caboolture was one of the first districts in Queensland where sugar was grown on a substantial scale. George Raff, a prominent Brisbane merchant and politician, began planting sugar at his Morayfield on the Caboolture River in 1864.
  One of the first to respond to the successes of Hope and Raff in growing sugar was Captain Claudius Buchanan Whish. Whish had served as an officer in the British army in India before deciding to begin a new career in Australia. After seeing Hope's and Raff's plantations in operation, Whish selected land on the southern banks of the Caboolture River. Whish named his property Oaklands and employed Buhot to provide advice on the planting of his estate.
  In 1865, Whish took on John Raymond Trevilian as a business partner for his Oaklands operations. Whish required a large labour force to cultivate the cane in sufficient quantities to make the operation marketable and profitable. After consulting with his contemporaries in the sugar industry, Raff and Hope, Trevilian undertook a voyage to Melanesia to find suitable labourers. In December 1865, 33 South Sea Islander labourers were brought to Australia and arrived at Oaklands by bullock dray after disembarking on the North Pine River. Whish is reported to have paid up to £7 for each labourer. They were housed in the cotton house and fed milk and rice. Whish was therefore not only a pioneer in the sugar industry but also in the use of South Sea Islander labour only two years after the first group of Islanders had been brought to Australia by Robert Towns for his cotton plantation on the Logan River.
  The introduction of Islander labour on Oaklands was an initial success. With a large amount of sugar being cultivated, Whish acquired capital to build a sugar mill on Oaklands in 1865. In 1866, he purchased a six-horsepower mill from Smellie & Co of Brisbane for his new mill and installed a Wetzel pan and centrifuge. A "single-flued boiler, mill, with three rollers" and a battery "set in brickworks, with plain brick top and skimmings channel therein", and a boiling-room and curing room were also on site. The sugar processing operations are also noted as being located in the "middle of the plantation, and at the top side of the present cultivation". Whish also obtained a distiller's licence for £25 so that he could produce rum from molasses.
  The success of the sugar operations at Oaklands and the use of Islander labour is further highlighted by Whish's replacement in 1867 of the original 33 Islander labourers with another 50 for whom he paid £150 in advance. That same year, his homestead included a large house, manager's residence, labourer's cottages and huts. There was also a large store, blacksmith's shop, stables and ca
caption: Claudius Buchanan Whish
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