Tully
Located in Dyirbal Country, 37 kilometres north-northwest of Cardwell, 47 kilometres south-southwest of Innisfail, 113 kilometres south of Cairns and 175 kilometres north-northwest of Townsville, Tully is reputedly Australia's wettest town — though Babinda, which has a higher average rainfall would dispute the claim — with the country's highest-ever annual rainfall (7,900 millimetres in 1950). The 7.9-metre Golden Gumboot, located on the way into the town's CBD, once travellers have left the Bruce Highway, is there to reinforce the claim.
While the nearby Tully River, from which the town takes its name, was named after Queensland Surveyor-General William Alcock Tully in the 1870s, the town was surveyed during the construction of a new sugar mill, developed after 1924. An earlier settlement known as Banyan had emerged on the northern side of Banyan Creek during the previous decade.
As one of the area's larger towns, with an economy based on sugar cane and bananas, Tully was the administrative headquarters of the Cardwell Shire, replacing Cardwell as the shire's centre in 1929 until the 2008 amalgamation that produced the new Cassowary Coast Region. The area's sugar cane is processed locally at the Tully Mill, and the raw sugar produced is shipped elsewhere for refining.
Although the area's first European settlers, nephews of investor-pastoralist James Tyson, raised beef cattle. Tyson and Isaac Henry established a short-lived sugar plantation and mill in the early 1880s, but bananas, grown by Chinese workers who had abandoned the northern goldfields, subsequently became the area's main crop. Other settlers grew crops such as citrus, cotton, rice, and potatoes.
After a 1911 Royal Commission into the sugar industry, looking to create central mills to crush sugar cane, placed the Tully River sixth in a list of twelve suitable locations, new mills were constructed at Babinda and Innisfail. World War I delayed proceedings after the Ryan Labour government's 1916 board of inquiry into the sugar industry ranked the area at the top of its list for a new central mill. The Theodore government's 1922 commission then selected Tully as the most suitable site for a central mill. Work on the mill began at the end of 1923. Farms were subdivided throughout 1924-25, and by 1927, Tully's growth completely overshadowed Cardwell. The Tully Mill remained in Government hands until local cane growers took it over as a cooperative in 1931.
While sugar remains important, the local economy has diversified; however, all forms of agriculture were severely damaged by Cyclone Larry (March 2006) and Cyclone Yasi (February 2011). Larry destroyed 90% of the area's banana crops; Yasi's 290 km/h wind gusts eliminated an estimated three-quarters of the banana crops, half of the sugar, and damaged or destroyed one in three houses.
Sources:
Google Maps (Location, directions and distances — my measurements)
Queensland Places: Tully
Wikipedia: Tully, Queensland:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tully,_Queensland
