Sugarcane harvesting at Ayr. North Queensland,.

With next season's cane already in the ground, harvesting is well underway in air in far north Queensland. The main growing region is from Cairns in the far north down to Bundaberg in the south and different areas have different types of cane and different soil conditions. When cane was cut by hand the fields were burnt to release pests and unwanted visitors from the fields. Since the introduction of mechanical harvesters in the 1960s fewer and fewer farmers now burn their cane. The cane on this farm has been burnt as there are a few farmers who still prefer this method. Different regions use different methods to load their empty rail cars. Here we see a haul-out truck with two full bins being taken back to the siding. The cane is drawn into the harvester by the lead screws and then chopped into small sections to be loaded into the trucks. We're in the haul-out truck now and we're pulling up alongside the harvester to get our empty bins loaded. They work out who's cane who. I know they do it by bin at the at the mill but you know you've got to make sure all their paperwork's good. Like you take in 200 bins and they miss a couple. Yeah well we pull out a book. It's got the farmer's name. This pointy end of the paddock requires a few short passes before the harvester can get back in and do a complete circle of the paddock. Now that's how you get the full bins off the truck and this is how you get the empty ones back on. You can see this type of cane here trendsetters how it's all bent and how there's all this leaves this is called trash. This is very different to the cane that's further up north which is more straight and just with a little tuft on the top. And because this cane is like this is one of the reasons why some of the farmers burn down here. Very hard for the harvesters to cut all this crap here and get it through the machine efficiently where with the straighter cane up north further up with just a little bit of a head on it much easier for the harvester. So it's one of the reasons why some of the guys do burn still down here. 400 kilometers up the road in Innisfail things are very different. The red soils and the different cane require different harvesting techniques. The way the cane is taken to the trains is also different. Gone are the haul out trucks replaced by tractors with hydraulic bins. Once at the rail sightings these hydraulic trailers tip the cane into the waiting bins.