QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Rocky challenges to be faced

The largest scheme of its kind in Queensland, it enabled the farmers to abandon mixed farming and concentrate on cane-growing, providing for an expansion of the mill capacity. Today there is a healthy concern for the area’s ecology and a wetlands study centre has been established. Each year it is visited by hundreds of schoolchildren and others interested in learning about and maintaining the delicate balance of plant and animal life in the environs of Moreton Bay. The Rocky Point sugar mill remains in the Heck family and continues to prosper, the sole surviovor still crushing the extensive fields of sugar cane grown in the area between Beenleigh and the Bay. In recent years an ethanol plant was constructed but it was discontinued as the federal government did not mandate the blending of ethanol in transport fuel. The Heck Group has since moved into electricity generation, using wood and the waste material from the crushed cane to fuel the furnace. In this way its 30 megawatt capability provides power to meet the needs of the sugar mill in the crushing season as well as supplying power into the state grid. This rich, productive and historic region is largely unknown to the thousands of commuters who pass each day between Brisbane and the Gold Coast on the Pacific Motorway, and some believe it could be rezoned for urban use. This is supported by neither the state government, nor the Gold Coast City Council; the area is too flat and low-lying. The Heck family appears to have a commitment – at least for now – to continue in the sugar industry to provide a good livelihood for some 80 farming families and about the same number of factory employees. Preservation of this existing ‘green belt’ in the metropolitan sprawls of Southeast Queensland would seem to be a legacy worth leaving.

When Carl’s son, Wilhelm Heinrich, took over, he bought the Central Mill at Benowa in 1906 and relocated it to Pimpama Island, thus stepping up the mill’s annual capacity from 800 to 40,000 tons – large enough to ensure the mill’s survival while all others in the area would eventually fail. By 1978 it had reached a crush of 300,000 tons a year. In the early days, much of the area was swampland and unsuitable for farming of any sort. However, the community got together and extensive drainage channels were dug – all shoveled by hand. Today such draining of swampland would be frowned upon but in the early 1900s it was an economic necessity for the inhabitants of the area. In 1967 another major drainage scheme was put in place in a joint venture of the Albert Shire Council (during Russ Hinze’s time on the council) and the Queensland Government. Based on undertakings given by the Heck family as millers and the local farmer suppliers, a huge system of channels and barrages was constructed to drain the remaining swampland and prevent the inundation of fertile land by the highest tides which had previously occurred. Rocky Point mill in 1958; unfortunately the background of the original is too faint to see any chimneys, but the appearance of the landscaped grounds of Friedensheim can be seen in the foreground. Image courtesy Kleinschmidt family collection

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