Additional throughput from the mines meant Townsville had a busy port where Rockhampton had the occasional vessel berthing at Port Alma. Townsville’s port had the additional business that flowed on from sugar exports.
It was also in the process of becoming the distribution centre for material brought into the region by ship.
There was a strong working class feel to the city.
The University College of Townsville was in the process of starting up, and there was an armed forces presence through the RAAF base at Garbutt, but the meat works, railway workshops and wharves, with an emerging industrial sector were the key factors that had brought the city to where it was.
Townsville had just celebrated its centenary, had recently seen a disastrous fire in the city’s bulk sugar terminal, had a single television station and a commercial radio station that usually out-rated its Ayr-based competitor and a branch of the national broadcaster on the AM band. ABC Television hadn’t quite penetrated this far north yet, though it was looming on the horizon.
There were other changes on the way.
While some might not have affected the city directly, they had implications for the way things were going to shape up.
Take, for instance, the development of the mechanical cane harvester.
The sugar industry, up to this point in time, had been a labour intensive affair.
In its earliest incarnation South Sea Islanders had been used to clear the land, cultivate the crop and carry out the harvest.
In that version of things the favoured model was the large plantation, or estate, but when the White Australia policy arrived with Federation, the large plantations were replaced by smaller blocks leased or owned outright by individual farmers.