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Sugar Cane
The Cudgen/ Kingscliff area was pioneered for sugar by a Frenchman named Cazalar. He was unsuccessful with his first crop of poppies for medical opium. Payments were slow and transport from Sydney was expensive.
An increase in planting sugar cane warranted a mill to be constructed in Cudgen by Mr. Cazalar in 1865. This mill was built on Cudgen Creek and was later to be known as Colliers Mill. The mill was steam driven with wooden rollers. Another mill, which was much smaller,was built by Mr. Cornwall on Cudgen Headland. However, a favourable report on the land along the Tweed River flats saw the Condong Sugar Mill in 1879, and the crushing in August 1880.
At the same time,Mr. W.Julius built another mill, which was located on cudgen hill where the soil was rich and plentiful.
This fertile area extended into the areas of Messrs. John Robb and J.Casey shared the land holdings of approximately 2000 acres of the Guilfoyle family. (Mr. J. Robb was a wealthy Victorian businessman with banking interests and Mr. J. Casey was a judge of the Victorian Supreme Court.)
1911 proved to be a disastrous year for the town with the fire and death of Mr. J. Robb.
The C.S.R. Company then purchased the mill, and burnt down the dwelling, which was a result of the hard work by the Kanaka tenants.
The mill was dismantled and conveyed to Condong Mill where it is still in use today. A few years later ,the Cornwall and Crawford Estates were also bought buy the C.S.R. Company and subdivided into cane farms to be operated by white labour only.
A wharf at Chinderah, formerly known as Cudgen Wharf,was connected to the tramline and was used as a mean of transport for the sugar cane. The sugar cane was then placed into a punt and taken to Condong Mill,where it was to be crushed.
These days Cudgen's rich red soil grows as many small crops as it does sugar cane,and the task of toiling with the soil still continues today as it has done many years before.
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Coast Guard
Coast Guard- Kingscliff
In 1981, Mr. George Bonnett, a resident of Kingscliff saw a gap in local marine communications between Coast Guard at Ballina and Tweed Heads Air- Sea Rescue.
On the 8th October 1981, Mr. Bonnett called a public meeting at the Kingscliff Hotel. Interested locals attended this meeting.
As a result of this meeting Kingscliff Radio was formed.
Cudgen Headland Surf Lifesaving Club kindly offered the use of a room and their facilities. This was gratefully accepted.
At the time, the Kingscliff radio watch were assisting in an average of about ten residents per month, working in close co-operation with other rescue groups and emergency services.
Many of the calls were from fishermen and pleasure boat owners taking out free life insurance by logging in before they went out to sea.
On the 26th October 1983 Kingscliff Radio Watch was officially recognized as a Limited Coast Station.
At this time they were still transmitting from the Surf Club, operating thirteen hours a day, seven days a week.
By late 1984, the Kingscliff Radio Watch had gone as far as it could under its own auspices.
On the 6th February 1985 the Kingscliff Radio Watch ceased to exist, but the service continued under the banner of the Australian Volunteer Coast Guard.
The fifteen members of the Kingscliff Radio Watch approved overwhelmingly of this move as they reconignsed it as a major step forward. They believed this move would help them win the fight to get the new premises closer to the Kingscliff Bar.
Members of the Coast Guard hoped to expand its role and eventually take command of its own rescue boat.
On New Years Day 1986, the Coast Guard radio antennas were struck by lightning during a storm which resulted in damage to the antennas and radios. The radios were sent to Brisbane for extreme repairs. With the loan of radios and assistance from other Coast Guards and Air- Sea Rescue stations, they were able to maintain a twenty-four hour service to the boating fraternity.
As time progressed it became apparent that more room was required within the vacinity for continued progress. A generous offer was made by the Kingscliff Fishing Club. They invited the Coast Guard to build an extension onto their meeting room in Rotary Park. The plans for the extensions were approved in 1986.
Work began on the new radio room almost immediately.The building of the extension room was coming along very quickly, thanks to a large group of dedicated volunteers which were led by flotilla member and builder, Ken Mc Donald.
They built the structure to "lock up" stage in just two weeks. The Coastguard began operating from the new radio room in January 1987. The new accommodations gave the operators a view of Cudgen Creek.
During this time the Coastguard was operating a twenty-four hour day, seven days a week. Radio operators were working from 1530 to 1730, even the duty officers were maintaining a watch from their homes.
While the Coastguard was operating from Rotary, they were also in the process of discussions and meetings with Tweed Shire Council in an attempt to find land for its own building, closer to the entrance of Cudgen Creek.
When correspondences began with the Tweed Shire Council in September 1987 regarding a new communications tower, the Coast Guard discussed building on the southern side of Cudgen Creek in Sutherland Park.
Council engineers said that development of a public building on that fragile land was not desirable.
Early in 1988, the Coast Guard asked New South Wales Government departments to support the construction of a Communications Tower on the northern wall of Cudgen Creek outlet.
Plans for the tower were submitted to the council. These plans were very similar to those plans of the Coast Guard tower at Port Kembla.
The council passed these plans for the tower on the northern side of Cudgen Creek in October 1988, and approval was gained by the Department of Public Works and the Soil Conservation Service.
Work on the new tower began in February 1989. Again, dedicated volunteers and Ken Mc Donald helped construct and build the new tower.
While the building was being constructed, other volunteers were frantically raising funds to keep up with the cost of building through donations and raffles.
The Coastguard also recieved help from some local service club members and building materials were donated from local firms. Also, many local builders worked on the tower free of charge.
"We had brickies working with us on Saturdays but they would also turn up on some working days."
It took fourteen months and a lot of volunteers with assistance from quite a few local builders giving us a hand to do it. In April 1990 we began operations from the tower.
The new tower has a 360 degree view and is two stories up with a view straight out to the sea, with clear visibility of the Kingscliff Bar and sea conditions. We also have visual contact of any sea- going craft and better radio reception. We have twelve radios covering all marine frequencies- 27 Meg, 2 Meg, VHF and HF. We also monitor 27 Meg CB and UHF. We have a facsimile that gives up to the minute weather information from Sydney and Brisbane and a radar covering up to thirty-six nautical miles.
The national Commodore of the Australian Volunteer Coast Guard Graham Clark officially opened the new tower on The 9th June 1990.
They also recieved a small rescue boat which was kindly donated to the coastguard.
This boat is suitable for giving assistance in the Tweed River but not suitable for going out to sea.
With the arrival of our boat we had to consider a boat shed. Plans were drawn up and were submitted to the Tweed Shire Council. These were given approval in June 1992.
The local shed is being built under the old rotary room in Rotary Park. Work began with the volunteers in September 1992 and will continue until some time.
The new structure will include extensions to the old radio room with provision for a boat shed and storage room underneath. The rescue boat will have direct accesses to Cudgen Creek.
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Sand Minning
In February, 1944, Mr John Alexander Foyster, the founder of Cudgen R.Z. lodged his first rutile-zircon mining lease applications and the Kingscliff, Norries Head an d Cudgen areas in New South Wales. He experienced considerable difficulty in obtaining the necessary permits from the wartime authorities for the purchase of plant and mineral and consequently it was not until 1947 that he made his first seams near the present plant headquarters at Kingscliff. In 1945 he formed a family partnership which subsequently became Cudgen R.Z. and the partnership continued to acquire more leases and to expand production as sales of rutile and zircon increased steadily.
With the boom in rutile process in 1956 and 1957 production expanded rapidly until 1958 when it became necessary to reduce production to a level commensurate with market requirements at the time.
Unlike many of its competitors, the partnership was able to maintain production at a reduced rate stability of market and process developed in 1961/62, largely by the expansion of rutile into the pigment field and the negotiation of long term contracts with overseas pigments manufacturers.
Since then, world demand for both rutile and zircon has steadily increased, creating the higher price levels which exist today.
In 1967 a Public Company, Cudgen R.Z. Limited, was formed to carry on the business. In the year Cudgen R.Z Limited in association with Consolidated Rutile Limited, another Foyster sponsored minerals sands producer, which operates the orderly marketing of the products. Current productions from both Companies is 130 000 tons of rutile and zircon per year.
The organization has been able to expand in a competitive associated with the mining and recovery of the products.
As Australia is the principle producer of rutile and zircon in the Free World these improvements have been brought about by the diligence of the local industry.
PRODUCTS:
Rutile has now assumed a major role in the manufacture of titanium metal which is currently finding an increasing worldwide application. Because of its lightweight, resistance to hight temperatures, its non-corrosive properties and great strength, particularly an allow form, it is in demand for use in hight-speed aircrafts, jet engines and space vehicles.
In its pure form rutile is titanium dioxide that is used extensively in the manufacture if titanium white pigments. Overall, titanium pigments high copacity chemical inertness. Low gravity, fine particles size and high index of refraction make an ideal for use in paints, varnishes and lacquers.
In addition, rutile is used as a coating for arc welding rods, which was its major use until recent years. The properties of Zircon make it ideal for use in foundry practices, ceramics and glazes. Zirconia, a derivative, is used in rocket motors and as a lining in hight temperature furnaces. Zirconium metal is used in the sheathing of uranium rods in nuclear reactor and also in the chemical, electronic and photographic industries. It as also used as an alloy with steel, where it helps to remove impurities because of its readiness to combine with hydrogen and oxygen at hight temperatures.
The Daily News: Article Its Origin, Discovery Friday, December (date/year unknown)
Tweed Heads: Although rutile was first identified on the east coast of Australia in 1925, it was not until 1934 that Zircon Rutile Ltd. Began mining it.
At that time the black sand concentrates of rutile, zircon and ilmenite was shipped overseas without separation. Geologists later discovered that economically workable deposits of rutile occurred on the Australian eastern seaboard from as far south as Port Kembla, New South Wales to Fraser Island, Queensland. They found the section between Newcastle and North Stradbroke Island bad easily the richest deposits.
Extracts form the book "Black Sands" by IW Morley
The Australia East Coast is often pictured as a place of sunshine and white beaches, with blue seas and surf breaking to the east and green sloped and trees to to the went. One of the attractions of this picture is the fine white-to-golden sand, which for a thousand kilometres enhances this unique playground. Few people at the scene would ever think of the wealth that lay hidden beneath and adjacent to the shore. These beaches, sand dunes and nearby hidden deposits are the worlds greatest resource of rutile (titanium dioxide) and zircon (zirconium silicate).
The total value of minerals taken out of these places to the year 1980 is approx ,000,000-.
One of these places of wealth is Kingscliff, known as Cudgen North back then.
The man who first held leases along the coast between Cudgen and Hastings Point was AJ Knowles. He worked these holdings in a small way in the late 1930s. From his tests, Knowles was able to sell his leases on a royal basis to the Titanium Alloy Manufactures Company (TAMCO).
Initial mining on the beach was with shovels, horses and scoops, with a horse drawn cart to transport the mineral for drying and bagging and shipments. The horse and cart transport of concentrates on the beach was soon succeeded by light tramway line with small hopper trucks drawn first by a horse, and later by a diesel locomotive. Air-dried concentrates were exported through the port of MacLean on the Clarence River fir shipments to Sydney and the east coast of the United States.
1940 saw the completion of the movement of TAMCO, from Yamba and Minnie Water to Cudgen. At Cudgen the original mining practice was similar to that at Yamba, being hand-shovelling and filling small hopper trucks. The TAMCO tittle at Cudgen was 60.3 metre in width from the high water mark westward and some 9.6 long southerly from Cudgen. To the west of this title numerous parallel leases were granted in the 1940s. These titles were 20.1 to 60.3 metres in width and up to 10km long. As these leases were in dense scrubland and rainforest, and largely on private land, there were many conflicts in interest. Once TAMCO was established at Cudgen there was a marked increase in output, largely due to wartime demands.
In 1942 Jim Murphy obtained titles to the Cudgen area inland from and parallel to the beach leases, being worked by TAMCO. With primitive plant and under wartime conditions Jim Murphy tested his lease and erected a small plant to produce mixed concentrates. This wartime mining operations was the commencement of the Murphy Deposits Syndicate and took a major part in the development of the modern pinch sluiced gravity separators.
The Daily News: Articles (Friday, December 13, 1963)
They Helped Shire Grow
The Tweed shire president, Cr C. H. Hall, said Cudgen RZ, owned and operated by the Foyster family in its mining operations over the past 15 years, had made a major contribution to developing in many ways.
He said the partnership had provided employment in the district for up to 250 men, providing for something like 1000 people.
It had brought considerable wealth into the Tweed Valley by the sale of its minerals, thus supporting other industries in the area.
Cudgen RZ had developed and beautified areas after mining operations.
The partnership had made direct contributions to improvements on reservices after mining such areas as Kingscliff, Hastings Point, Bogangar, Kerosene Bay, Fingal and Pottsville.
Cudgen RZ and Associated minerals each would contribute 9000 pounds towards the cost of constructing a 40,000 pounds bridge over Mooball Creek at Pottsville.
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1990's
- A small private sandmining operation ceased work on the south side beach at Kingscliff.
This was the last operation of sandmining in the area. Since council has reclaimed the area it has become a beautiful picinic, recreation and spoting area. |
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