Sunnyside Sugar Plantation is the heritage-listed remains of a former sugar plantation at 94 Windermere Road, Windermere, Bundaberg Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built in s by South Sea Islander labour. It is also known as Dry-rubble Boundary Wall. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 13 May 1996.
History The former Sunnyside sugar plantation, which initially comprised , is situated on Windermere Road, to the east of Bundaberg. The property was established by Edward Turner in 1875, and used to grow sugar from the early 1880s, in which work South Sea Islanders were employed until the turn of the century. In 1884 Turner established a juice mill on the property, piping his cane juice to the Millaquin refinery. Remnants of the sugar plantation era include two weeping fig trees (Ficus benjamina), an area of 29 burials in three rows, as well as a dry-rubble wall along Windermere Road. Initially the wall extended almost the full road frontage of Portion 85, but it has been reduced to about half this length ().
The economy of Bundaberg was underpinned by the sugar industry from the early 1880s. During the late 19th century when South Sea Islanders were employed, it progressed from being the second largest sugar producing region in Queensland to the largest by 1900. The employment of Islanders was always controversial; a raft of legislation being introduced to protect their welfare in response to incidents of exploitation, and then to phase out their employment in favour of the use of white labour.
The township of Bundaberg was established on the banks of the Burnett River. Timbergetters came through the area in the 1860s and were later followed by sugar planters taking advantage of the lands made available under the Crown Lands Alienation Act 1860 and the 1865 Coffee and Sugar Regulations. By 1868 the district surveyor John Thompson was instructed to mark out a town on the south bank of the river. This was completed by 1869 and the town was declared a port of entry in June 1871. The port serviced the copper mines of Mount Perry, although in competition with the nearby port of Maryborough. Sugar became the industry which underpinned the prosperity of Bundaberg, with the first of many sugar mills there established by Richard Palmer in 1872.
Edward Turner, his wife Janet and daughter Pauline arrived in Hervey Bay aboard the "Sultana" in 1866. A native of Oswestry, Shropshire, England and a stonemason/bricklayer by trade, Turner reputedly first went prospecting on the Palmer River goldfields. He then worked as a stonemason for Robert Cran at his plantation Yengarie, west of Maryborough. Turner purchased a town allotment in Churchill Street, Maryborough, in 1867 which he sold in mid 1874. He then selected in the Woongarra Scrub to the east of Bundaberg in June 1874. His selection, Portion 85, comprised of agricultural land and 40 (16ha) of second class pastoral. He lived on the property which he named "Sunnyside" from January 1875. By the following year Turner had cleared and cultivated 18 acres. He built a slab house with three rooms and a kitchen with a brick oven and a number of outbuildings; established a waterhole and a well; built a pigsty and a calf paddock and was growing maize at this time. By 1880 he had 20 acres under cultivation, with an unknown crop. Turner fulfilled the conditions of his selection under the Crown Lands Alienation Act 1868 and in 1881 he applied to purchase the property, and a deed of grant was issued.
Turner used South Sea Islander labour, as did most farmers in the district. The use of South Sea Islander labour had been pioneered in Australia in the 1840s by Benjamin Boyd in the New South Wales (NSW) Riverina District, employing them as shepherds in lieu of convict labour. The procurement of South Sea Islander labour to Queensland was initiated by Captain Robert Towns. He had been involved in the importation of Asiatic labourers during the 1840s and 1850s in NSW, and was also part of a push for the use of Indian coolie labour in the early 1860s in Queensland. At the time the concept that labouring in the tropics was unhealthy for Europeans had widespread currency. The Queensland Government removed restrictions on the introduction of Asiatic labour in May 1861, which led to the introduction of South Sea Island labourers to Queensland.
Robert Towns' first group of 67 South Sea Islanders arrived in Brisbane on the "Don Juan" on 14 August 1863. They went to work on his cotton plantation Townsvale (later Veresdale) on the Logan River, where Towns hoped to capitalise on declining cotton production in America during the Civil War. Captain Claudius Whish used Islanders on his Oaklands Sugar Mill near Caboolture as did Captain Louis Hope on his Ormiston sugar plantation at Ormiston, near Cleveland. In 1865 a group of Islanders was landed at Bowen, to be employed by pastoralists. By March 1868, 2107 Islanders had been brought to Queensland, employed in various capacities including agricultural and pastoral work, and as servants in the towns. They lived and worked anywhere from Mackay and Bowen, to the Wide Bay district and west to Roma. South Sea Islanders were generally employed on three-year contracts bound by the Masters and Servants Act 1861.
By 1868, there were reports that the recruitment of South Sea Islanders had devolved into kidnapping (a practice known as blackbirding). In response the Polynesian Labourers Act 1868, was enacted to regulate recruitment. Under the Act, the Islanders were required to sign a contract for up to three years, on a minimum wage of £6 per year plus rations and a trip home after three years. Deaths and desertions were to be reported to the nearest magistrate. In 1870 government agents were appointed to sail with the recruiting vessels to supervise the conditions of appointment. During the 1870s and 1880s there was ongoing public criticism and political debate about the use of Islander labour. The number of recruitments increased from 1539 in 1868 to 10,057 by 30 June 1884.
A number of Acts of Parliament were introduced to protect the Islanders from unscrupulous recruiters and employers including the Kidnapping Act of 1872 and the Pacific Islanders Labourers Act 1875. Following a Select Committee enquiry into Polynesian Labour, further amendments were initiated in 1877 and 1878 but not legislated. Then in December 1880 new Premier Thomas McIlwraith rescinded the 1868 Act, introducing a new Pacific Islander Labourers Act 1880 which set limitations on the age of recruits, their living conditions, medical service and ration provisions. Islanders could only be employed in tropical or semi-tropical agriculture, including the cultivation of sugar cane, cotton, tea, coffee, rice and spices.
South Sea Islanders working in Bundaberg had initially arrived through Maryborough. The first direct shipment into the Port of Bundaberg occurred in May 1879, by the schooner "Lucy and Adelaide". The Islanders numbered 81 males and seven females. The number contracted to each farm or plantation is unknown. Labourers were recruited from a number of locations including the Solomon Islands, New Hebrides, and Loyalty Islands, all with different languages and customs. This region is now known as Melanesia, and includes the Bismark Archipelago of Papua New Guinea. Despite claims that Edward Turner was personally involved in the recruitment trade, no evidence has been found indicating his ownership of any boat engaged in recruiting Islanders.
Turner continued to plan the development of his farm. In December 1883 he subdivided a two and a half acre lot (Sub 1, Portion 185) (1ha) from the north-western corner of his allotment along Windermere Road. A juice mill was established on this site, in partnership with Frederic and Charles Buss. They had a number of sugar plantations and numerous business interests in the region, including a store in town that became Buss and Turner in 1886 after James Edwin Turner (no relation to Edward Turner) from Sydney joined the firm. Edward Turner's juice mill was operational by 1884, when cane was crushed and the juice piped to the Millaquin Refinery (established 1881) for treatment. Juice mills were commonplace in the area with 24 established between 1882 and 1884, including at Ashgrove, Avoca, Fairymead, Glenmorris, Grange, Kepnock, Mabbro, Summerville, Windermere, and Woodbine by October 1883. Hummock, Oakwood, and Spring Hill mills were established in 1883 and Seaview, Mon Repos, and Sunnyside and Woodlands in 1884.
Sunnyside's juice mill site (Sub 1), was transferred to Edward Turner's sole ownership in March 1888. In order to ensure the viability of the juice mill, Turner acquired another parcel of land on the southern slopes of The Hummock (Portion 87) in October 1888. This expanded his property to , financed by a £2000 mortgage from the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney against the Sunnyside property. Sunnyside was typical of the smaller family-run sugar plantations in Bundaberg, which were generally between . Many had their own juice mills, piping juice to Millaquin refinery - as opposed to the large plantations such as Fairymead, of and Bingera of which had large mills.
The type of work undertaken by the South Sea Islanders on the property and their conditions were summarised by the eldest son Herbert Turner in his 1955 publication: "Rural Life in Sunny Queensland". He indicated that a property of approximately 150 acres with a juice mill required about 45 Islanders. The first duty of an owner was to supply each Islander with a new blanket, clothing, and a hat, a plug of tobacco, which was subsequently supplied weekly, and the clothing half-yearly. His pay was between £20 and £25 which was paid half yearly at the Immigration Depot in the presence of the Inspector of Polynesians. Three meals were supplied daily, as specified by Government regulations.
While some of the properties had been cleared initially by the selectors, the role of the Islanders was to clear the remaining virgin scrub: felling, burning and clearing the large volcanic stones, which were collected and sometimes drilled and blasted. Rocks unearthed during this process were placed on wooden sleds, pulled by draught horses. Big rocks which would not fit on the sled would be broken up with spalling hammers. These pieces would then be placed on corn bags; an Islander on each corner, it would then be carried to the sled. When full, the sleds were taken to the end of the paddock where they were unloaded. Dry-rubble walls were constructed in layers, with larger stones placed around the outside and smaller stones used for infill. This seems to have been a common construction method in the Woongarra and was employed at Sunnyside to make a wall along the northern boundary of the property. About 6 examples of it remain in the Bundaberg district, including one associated with the former Mon Repos sugar plantation and entered in the Queensland Heritage Register (the South Sea Islander Wall). Edward Turner was a stonemason and it is probable that he directed construction of the wall at Sunnyside. The creation of dry-stone boundary walls was commonplace in England where many of Queensland's settlers originated.
Islanders were also employed in planting cane, by following behind a horse-drawn plough driven by a European, and dropping cane plants into the furrows. Similarly at harvest time, the Islanders would be involved in cutting and loading cane into horse-drawn drays driven by Europeans.