Victoria Plantation

Victoria Plantation, a sugar mill town, is five km east of Ingham. It is one of two sugar mill towns in the Herbert River Valley.

In 1855 a Melbourne entrepreneur, Edward Knox, formed the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR) and two years later formed an associated Victoria Sugar Company. The companies moved their activities northward as cane-growing areas were opened up, and in 1883 opened two mills in Queensland, one being the Victoria Mill on the Herbert River, near Ingham. Known as Victoria Estate, CSR spent £240,000 on the plantation, transport and the mill during 1883-85. Steam ploughs cleared the scrub, hundreds of labourers were employed, and 17 miles of railway and four locomotives hauled the cane to the mill. Following the general practice of replacing company plantations with privately run small farms, CSR subdivided Victoria Estate in 1892. Two years later a local primary school, Victoria Plantation, opened.

The Victoria Mill ultimately became Australia's largest, remaining so until overtaken by CSR's Invicta Mill at Giru in 1999. Many of the cane farms were owned by Italian families; 303 (61%) of the farms supplying Victoria Mill were Italian-owned in 1980. The mill dominated the town, which had a store with a post office (1925) and little more in the early post war years. The Church of England (1922) was used for marriages as much by Italians as Australian-born. Population peaked in the 1950s, numbers in recent years mirroring the decline in the sugar industry.

Victoria Plantation's census populations have been: