Rural to Reef

Cane variety performance for region

Community NewsVariety % CCS Variety Q183 23.49 12.34 Q242 % 8.55 CCS 11.13 Q240 19.87 12.20 KQ228 4.80 11.86 Q208 17.90 10.63 Q238 4.23 12.39 Q232 8.97 11.09 SP80 2.90 12.48

Weekly Production Figures Comments:

Despite some hindrances at the start of the week due to wet field conditions and some factory issues, the mill performed well in the latter half and finished the Wilmar Sugar, Proserpine Mill Week 27, ending 31 December 2022 week 10,700 tonnes above forecast. This week Season to date The average weekly CCS of 12.77 units was 0.17 units above budget. The highest CCS sample was 14.82 units from a rake of Q208 ratoon in the Lethebrook Productivity District. Growers are reminded that the 2023 farm forecast maps have been uploaded to GrowerWeb. Please update these with any changes for the 2023 crushing season. Contact the Proserpine logistics officer with any queries. Additionally, the first end of season notice to growers has been uploaded to GrowerWeb. Further updates will be made in the same area. Wilmar Sugar plans to continue crushing through Christmas this year, provided there is adequate cane supply. Logistics officers are contacting growers to gauge their interest in harvesting over this traditional holiday period. With school holidays under way, we ask parents and carers to remind children that cane trains will continue to operate into January this season. Please keep your train brain switched on. Be alert, stay off our rail network and always give way to cane trains.

Cane crushed Average bin weight 25,487 1,736,035 9.02 9.59

Comments:

11.12 13.77

Cane variety performance for region Variety % CCS Variety % CCS

Q208 33.28 10.78 Q232 2.35 9.62 Q183 24.57 11.97 Q212 2.28 7.83 Q240 21.04 10.32 Q252 1.82 11.48 KQ228 3.18 10.38 Q238 1.46 10.25

A fantastic effort was made by mill employees and the harvesting sector to continue crushing through Christmas. Unfortunately wet weather forced a stop to crushing operations from Christmas afternoon until Friday. Weekly throughput was 28,000 tonnes below forecast as a result. With the ongoing threat of wet weather impacting operations, growers have started to declare standover for the current season. Please notify our Logistics Officer if you are considering, or wish to declare, standover. Jed Page Cane SupplyCCS levels for the week started in the Manager

Proserpine Region

mid-11s and dropped to the mid-10s by the end of the week, averaging 11.12 units overall. This was 0.40 unitsdown on the previous week, but slightly above forecast. The highest CCS sample was 13.43 units from a rake of Q183 ratoon in the Cannon Valley Productivity District. With school holidays under way, we ask parents and carers to remind children that cane trains will continue to operate into January this season. Please keep your train brain switched on. Be alert, stay off our rail network and always give way to cane trains.

Jed Page Cane Supply Manager Proserpine Region

Water Quality Programs On Track

Over the past weeks, we have been featuring stories on various water quality projects being delivered in the Mackay Whitsunday region, which are funded by the partnership between the Australian Government and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. Regional programs, like those being delivered here in the Whitsundays, seek to work with landholders to refine farming practices now and into the future, leading to enduring water quality improvement. To date nearly 400 farm-level projects are underway in the Mackay Whitsunday region, with all contributing to specific targets on reduction of pesticides and nutrients entering the Great Barrier Reef lagoon. The Mackay Whitsunday Water Quality Program (MWWQP) targets are to reduce losses of Dissolved Inorganic Nitrogen (DIN) by 26 tonnes and pesticide active ingredients by 215 kilograms. Now over halfway through the program, modelling shows that these targets are expected to be met or exceeded by the completion date of June 2024. uptake of projects in our region highlights the commitment of growers to improve water quality on farm and consequently the quality of water that flows to the reef.”

The overall target of all regional water quality programs in Queensland is to reduce 457 tonnes of DIN, 463 kilotonnes of fine sediments and 250 kilograms of pesticides from entering the Reef. More than 800 farmers and graziers to date are involved in projects that have contributed to the 187 tonnes of nitrogen, 229 kilograms of pesticides and up to 37 kilotonnes of fine sediment prevented from entering the Reef each year so far (GBRF Progress Dashboard). Reporting on the outcomes of the projects from all regional programs is through the Paddock to Reef integrated monitoring, modelling and reporting program (Paddock to Reef) which is jointly funded by both the Australian and Queensland Governments. For more information on the Mackay Whitsunday Water Quality Program or Paddock to Reef please visit www.reefcatchments.com.au Sea level rises are not new. Following the last Ice age, as the world began to warm causing the massive polar ice caps to melt, sea levels all around the world began to rise. Over a period of 12,000 years (between 18,000 and 6000 years ago) the sea levels rose more than 120 metres.

Although this happened erratically, with some very rapid rises and some halts, this does average out at a rise of 1 centimetre a year - or half a metre in the lifetime of someone who lived to the age of 50 - and must have come as a shock to the people who experienced them. Although there have been many fluctuations, it had been over 100,000 years since sea levels were high enough to flood the Torres Strait and Bass Strait. Before then, continental shelves all around the world had long been dry land.

About one-seventh of the land mass which was the Australian continent at the end of the Ice age - two and a half million square kilometres - became submerged. This is equal to the present state of Western Australia. When rising quickly, the sea is likely to have drowned gently sloping plains in Northern Australia at the rate of 5 kilometres a year, inundating strips of land over 100 kilometres wide within a generation. Where the continental shelf sloped more steeply the rise would have been less dramatic but would have impinged on the people’s lives nonetheless - and they would have had no way of knowing that the sea would ever stop rising. Memories of this sea level rise is preserved in mythology. All around the world there were tales of floods. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stories are particularly rich in references to inundation. Damarri, a Dreamtime figure of the Gungandji Aboriginal people, from the Cairns area was caught out as the sea levels rose but managed to stop the flood by heating stones in a fire and throwing them into the sea. The rocks can still be seen, off the coast at Yarrabah.

Land which was inundated was not ‘lost’ to the people who traditionally include it in their tribal territories. For many indigenous people’s both land and sea, and the creatures which lived there, have a spiritual significance which is intimately linked to their particular creation beliefs and that sense of attachment was not destroyed simply because some of the land was covered with sea. New creation stories explain the origins of Islands and reefs and the inundated territory became ‘sea country’. See the Reef, Love the Reef, Protect the Reef. Contributed by Master Reef Guide Brent Chatterton.