Fairymead Sugar Mill began life in approximately 1872 when brothers, Alfred and Arthur Brown, took up the Queensland government’s offer of land to grow sugarcane under the Sugar and Coffee Regulations Act 1864.

This first venture into sugarcane growing was abandoned by the Browns in 1875, and then sold to brothers, Arthur, Horace, and Ernest Young in 1878, who, over the years that followed from the start of their operations in 1880, saw Fairymead develop into a profitable, state-of-the-art sugar plantation. 

Around this same time period, in 1882, the Youngs began use of a Fowler tra