HISTORY
Pioneers grow
COTTON & SUGAR
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By Barry Clark Bribie Island Historical Society
ong before anyone or anything was happening on Bribie Island, in the 1860s pioneer settlers tried first to grow cotton, and then sugar, on the Caboolture River. They had much to learn in that early “multicultural” environment. George Raff was a businessman and politician who had emigrated from Scotland to Sydney in 1839. He married the daughter of a retired missionary and moved to Brisbane in 1851 for new trade and investment opportunities. His house in New Farm he named Moraybank, a reference to his native Morayshire in Scotland.
Raff helped to establish direct wool trade between Brisbane and London. As a politician, he campaigned for the separation from NSW and served as a member of Queensland’s first Parliament. With others, in 1861 he set up the Caboolture Cotton Co., one of 10 cotton companies established in Queensland, using expensive imported equipment 38 www.thebribieislander.com.au
The Bribie Islander
George Raff
MORAYFIELD Raff built the large plantation homestead beside the Caboolture River, on a slight rise to protect from flooding, with outhouses, separate kitchen, carriage house and stables. The large property, he named Morayfield, was on rich alluvial soil, surrounded on three sides by the Caboolture River. With 120 acres of cotton crops, it suffered severely in disastrous floods of March 1863, after which they soon switched from growing Cotton to Sugar.
