Millaa Millaa
Located seventy kilometres southwest of Cairns and forty-five due west of Innisfail on Mamu country towards the southern end of the Atherton and Evelyn Tablelands, Millaa Millaa is thought to take its name from a Mamu expression describing a fruit-bearing plant, the rainforest vine (Elaeagnus triflora).
While Christie Palmerston passed through the area on his twelve-day expedition that established a track between Mourilyan Harbour, Geraldton (Innisfail) and the newly discovered tin deposits at Herberton in 1882, the dense rainforest 'scrubs' kept European settlers out until well into the 20th century.
The first settlers walked in from Atherton and developed timber and dairy operations. By 1913, out of a population of around one hundred, only six were women. The Millaa Millaa Hotel opened after the railway line from Malanda reached Millaa Millaa in 1921.
The Millaa Millaa Sawmilling Company started in 1924 to exploit rainforest cabinet timbers, and the district boomed as the 'big scrubs' were cleared. Timbergetters hauled massive logs two and a half metres in diameter out of the forest. They processed them at the town's two sawmills.
Initially, dairy produce went to Atherton or Malanda until the Millaa Millaa Co-operative commenced operations in 1930.
World War II brought expansion in the timber industry and a change of direction for dairying, supplying milk to troop encampments on the Tablelands rather than butter bound for more distant markets.
By 1950, Swedish chiropractor Ernst Kjellberg's Beachview healing centre had five hundred staff and patients.
While the 1950s were reasonably prosperous times for dairy farmers, by 1960, declining soil fertility and increasing off-farm costs saw farmers start to amalgamate to maintain viability. Numbers dropped from 130 suppliers in 1960 to 58 in 1971. Returns improved after the Millaa Millaa Co-operative changed from butter to cheese production in 1965.
From the mid-sixties, however, the area slipped into decline. The railway was closed in 1964, the dairy factory amalgamated with the Malanda Dairy Association in 1973 and closed in the eighties. The sawmill closed in 1987, and the population declined as Millaa Millaa changed to a tourism and service centre. The emergence of the Mungalli biodynamic cheese factory has been an interesting recent development.
Links to add:
Beachview healing centre
Cairns
Christie Palmerston
Elaeagnus triflora
Ernst Kjellberg
Evelyn Tableland
Geraldton (Innisfail)
Herberton
Innisfail
Malanda
Malanda Dairy Association
Mamu
Millaa Millaa Co-operative Dairy
Millaa Millaa Sawmilling Company
Mourilyan Harbour
Mungalli Biodynamic Dairy
