Meringa Sugar Experiment Station is a heritage-listed research station at 71378 Bruce Highway, Meringa, Gordonvale, Cairns Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Goodsir & Carlyle, Baker & Wilde, and the Queensland Department of Public Works and built from 1914 to 1918 by Queensland Department of Public Works. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 18 July 2014.
History The Meringa Sugar Experiment Station (SES) is located on the east side of the Bruce Highway about north of the Meringa railway station on the North Coast railway line, and north of the town of Gordonvale. It has been an important part of the Queensland sugar industry since 1917, first as an Entomological Station, researching insect pests, and from the 1930s as a sugarcane breeding facility. In 1935 the Meringa SES bred the first cane toads released in Queensland, and from 1945 experiments with the insecticide benzene hexachloride (BHC) at Meringa were successful in controlling the sugar cane pest, the greyback grub. The Meringa SES is now operated by Sugar Research Australia. Older buildings of cultural heritage significance include: the former Entomologist's residence (1917); a corrugated iron implement and tractor shed (c.1935); a glasshouse (1957); a 1962 brick office and laboratory building; and a 1969 two storey brick office building. More recent buildings of heritage significance include the crossing facility (1977–1980) and the photoperiod facility (1986–2008).
The site of the Meringa SES was once part of a Camping Reserve (R.223) located north of Gordonvale on the Mulgrave River. This was the traditional country of the Yidinjdji people. The area was first settled by Europeans when the Alley and Blackwell families arrived simultaneously from Cairns in 1878 and both families selected land in late 1879. The site of Gordonvale was a Native Police camp in 1885 and later became a small village named Mulgrave, with three pubs, a store and a butcher's shop. The Mulgrave Central Sugar Mill started crushing in 1896 and that year the first part of a town named Nelson (after then Premier of Queensland, Sir Hugh Nelson) was surveyed southwest of the mill, around Swan Street. The sections further north, including what later became Norman Park, were surveyed in 1899. Nelson was renamed Gordonvale (after the pioneer and butcher John Gordon) in 1914 to avoid confusion with towns called Nelson in New South Wales, Victoria, and New Zealand.
The Mulgrave Central Mill was a product of the Sugar Works Guarantee Act 1893 that provided for the erection of approved central mills on a government loan if farmers mortgaged their land as security. After the principal and interest was met, these central mills were then handed to the growers as cooperative mills. Prior to central mills, the plantation system was the main form of sugar production in Queensland. Large landholdings were worked by South Sea Islander labour and sugar was processed at plantation sugar mills. Sugar was first crushed in commercial quantities in Queensland in the early 1860s by Captain Louis Hope, near Cleveland. In 1878 the Queensland Government began selling Far North Queensland land along the Bloomfield, Daintree, Mossman, Barron, Mulgrave and Johnstone Rivers. Land was secured by small farmers and larger companies, and by 1884 the sugar industry was established in the region. Nine sugar plantations were established in Far North Queensland from 1878 to 1891.
The sugar mill of the Pyramid plantation, located south of Gordonvale, operated between 1885 and 1890. However, two main factors led to six Far North Queensland plantations closing by 1891. First, there was a steep fall in sugar prices in 1884. Second, the Queensland Government sought to promote settlement through small land holdings worked by farmers of European descent. Legislation from the mid-1880s, along with later Australian Government legislation, led to the end of the use of indentured South Sea Islander labour by 1904. The system of large plantations with their own sugar mills was replaced, by the early 20th century, with a system of small farms and central sugar mills.
Although the method of growing sugar changed, it continued to play an important part in the economy of Far North Queensland. After the Federation of Australia, the sugar industry was regarded as vital to Australia's economic priorities; and also as a means to settle the north of the country as part of Australia's defence strategy. From the 1910s the Australian sugar industry became highly protected, regulated and increasingly mechanised, receiving active support from both Queensland and Australian governments through legislation. The number of small sugarcane growers in Queensland grew from 359 in 1893 to 4,238 in 1911. Later, by the beginning of World War II, sugar was an important component in the Queensland economy, providing export earnings as Queensland's major crop and promoting regional growth; as a proportion of primary production, sugar grew from less than 10% in 1910 to 18% in 1940.
Research into disease-resistance, farming techniques and technological innovation was also recognised as important by the 20th century and was supported by the Queensland Government. The first Sugar Experiment Stations (SES) in the world were located in Louisiana, USA, and Java (both established 1885), followed by Hawaii (1895), and Saint Kitts, West Indies, (1899). Queensland's first SES was established in late 1900 at "The Lagoons", Mackay. However, sugar growers wanted government research into soils and new cane varieties, and a laboratory was added at Mackay in 1898. The next year it was announced that the Mackay nursery would become a SES. Walter Maxwell, Director of the SES in Hawaii, was invited to Queensland, visiting in December 1899. He later accepted a job as Director of the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations (BSES), starting in November 1900.
The BSES was established under The Sugar Experiment Stations Act of 1900. Initially administered by Queensland's Department of Agriculture (later the Department of Agriculture and Stock), the BSES undertook research to assist growers and millers improve the breeding, planting, growing, harvesting and milling of sugar cane. The work of the BSES was financed through a Sugar Fund, established by the 1900 Act.
Maxwell, who headed the BSES until 1909, recommended a total of three SES in Queensland, but this did not occur immediately. Although a soils laboratory and Director's headquarters operated in Bundaberg from August 1901 to 1910, an SES was not established in the area until a cane farm with two residences was acquired at East Bundaberg in 1913. Prior to 1913, field experiments with sugar cane varieties were carried out at the Mackay SES. A third SES was established at South Johnstone (south of Innisfail) in 1917–18, located across the river from the sugar mill, and sugar cane was growing there by December 1919.
Entomological research began in 1911 with the appointment of the American Entomologist Alexandre Arsène Girault to work in Nelson (Gordonvale) in a rented building. Alan Parkhurst Dodd (son of the "Butterfly Man of Kuranda", Frederick Parkhurst Dodd) was appointed assistant entomologist, and worked at Gordonvale, and later Meringa, between 1912 and 1921 (he spent three and a half years of this period serving in the Australian Imperial Force during World War I). Dodd later went on to play a major role in the defeat of prickly pear infestation by the Cactoblastis moth. Girault was replaced by Edmund Jarvis in 1914. At this time the insect of most concern was the greyback grub, the offspring of the greyback cockchafer (cane beetle, Dermolepida albohirtum). Although the adult beetle ate cane leaves, the grub inflicted more damage by attacking the cane's roots.
To further research into cane grubs, in January 1916 the Department of Agriculture and Stock asked for five acres (two hectares) of land near the Gordonvale State School for an Entomological Reserve; with room for residences, student quarters, a laboratory, office and insectarium, plus experimental crops. In February the Land Commissioner instead offered the Department part of the Camping Reserve (R.223), located north of Gordonvale, and just north of a Reserve for a Prison (R.483). Ten acres (four hectares) with the best soil, thickly forested and located at the southern end of the road frontage of the Camping Reserve, was surveyed as Portion 29 in June 1916, and was gazetted a Reserve for Entomological Purposes, Reserve 1544 (R.502) in August 1916.
The site (at Meringa) became the Entomological Station for the BSES, and two residences, a laboratory and an insectary were constructed during 1917. These buildings, all highset and timber framed, were located in the southern half of the reserve. Construction plans for the Entomologist's residence were prepared by January 1917, by the Public Works Department. The two bedroom house included a dining room and drawing room, encircling verandas and a semi-detached kitchen and maid's room. A wash house was under the kitchen.
The residence was first occupied by Dr James F Illingworth, who replaced Jarvis as Entomologist in 1917. Illingworth began extensive field tests with lime, fertilizers, arsenic and creosote as soil fumigants to see how they impacted on cane grub attacks. These experiments were not successful, but Illingworth did provide cane growers with advice on improved cultivation methods. Prior to 1975 the Meringa facility was administered by Illingworth (1917–1921), Edmund Jarvis (1921–1934), Edwin J Barke (1934–1938), Reginald William Mungomery (1938–1945), James Hardie Buzacott (1945–1947, 1966–1970), Gilbert Bates (1947–1966) and JC Skinner (from 1970).
The Assistant Entomologist's residence was located south of the Entomologist's residence. The Entomological Laboratory, east of the Entomologist's residence, consisted of four rooms, with a veranda to three sides, and a small laboratory enclosed at the end of one veranda. The laboratory building later contained a museum, holding displays of various insect pests for the education of sugar farmers.
Entomology was only one aspect of the BSES's operations. In the late 1920s the BSES was split into four divisions: Soils and Agriculture, Pathology, Entomology, and Mill Technology. When the Pathology Division was formed, Queensland had a greater number of sugar cane diseases than any other cane-growing country. By 1931 the BSES had three SES's (Mackay, Bundaberg, and South Johnstone); one entomological station (at Meringa); two entomological laboratories (Mackay and Bundaberg); plus administrative offices and laboratories in Brisbane. In 1933 the Advisory Committee of the BSES was established. After being renamed in 1934 the first meeting of the Advisory Board of the BSES was held in 1935.
Although the Meringa facility initially began as an entomological station, it commenced research into cane varieties in the 1930s. Prior to the opening of the South Johnstone SES the BSES was unable to obtain seedlings from arrows (the inflorescence containing the sugarcane's flowers) picked at the Mackay SES; but seedlings were raised from local fuzz (seed) at the South Johnstone SES in 1921, and controlled pollination was conducted there from 1926. However, the BSES decided that South Johnstone was not the best site for cane breeding, and this work was transferred to Meringa from 1934, while the South Johnstone site was taken over by the Bureau of Tropical Agriculture. The entomological, cane breeding and agricultural work of the BSES in the north was now concentrated at Meringa. In 1934 the BSES's Divisions of Pathology and Entomology were combined.