00:00While most of Tully's residents are still asleep, the town's sugar mill hasn't stopped
00:10working, maintaining its months-long, non-stop schedule.
00:19As the night shift clocks off, the day shift clocks on.
00:25Tully is a sugar and banana town, home to around 2,500 people, about 140 kilometres south
00:33of Cairns.
00:36It's nearing the end of the crush, but this year is special.
00:40It's the 100th season Tully Sugar has been firing on all cylinders.
00:48For a century, cane has been grown and harvested around here, transported by special trains
00:54to the mill, where it undergoes a 14-hour process to create raw sugar.
01:03The Tully Sugar mill is the only one in Australia open to the public.
01:07This morning, the primary school students from the nearby tiny community of El Arish are getting
01:13a lesson on a local industry which has allowed the region to prosper.
01:17So this here is the original molasses tank.
01:21So this has been here since 1925, so it's 100 years old.
01:25For 15 years, Judy McLaren has been taking tours through the mill, demystifying the process.
01:31It's quite amazing as to how sugar is made.
01:35People have got no idea.
01:36I've had old cane cutters actually come on tour, who forever cut cane with the knife, and
01:45they were amazed, because they never ever entered the sugar mill, so they've come on later in
01:51their life and done the tour, and they're quite amazed.
01:54It was really cool to see how the sugar was made.
01:57We got to try a little bit.
01:59Tasted really good.
02:02Don't want to have too much of it, it was pretty sweet.
02:05Tully's town and its mill grew together.
02:09It's impossible to separate one from the other.
02:14For production manager John Edwards, sugar represents more than a career.
02:19He has spent his entire working life at the mill.
02:22This is the cane that's coming in, obviously you can see billets of cane and also some trash
02:26as well.
02:27He started as an apprentice and has been here for more than 40 years.
02:33You drive past the outside and it looks like a big rusty tin shed, but it's a heavy engineering
02:37business.
02:38We've got three boilers generating about 400 tonnes of steam, we've got the capacity to
02:43generate 28 megawatts of electricity, we're exporting to the national grid as a green renewable
02:48energy continuously.
02:52Again, what makes the other lines of electricity Barry?
02:57It looks like a dozen and radioactive water spillgers.
02:59It makes it natural and unique too.
03:01Like, money in fact accurately.
03:02It is likeYOimet yeah, it is cool.
03:04Two ships are all than half the aluminum pipelines.
03:05Of course, one of the two ships were everyone knows about one thing, he ossia volleyball
03:10beimç„é.
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