[1] Sugar cane had been first brought to Australia in 1788 but subsequent plantings at Sydney, Port Macquarie and Norfolk Island failed to be commercially viable.

[1] In 1862 John Buhot, originally from Barbados, in the West Indies, experimentally produced sugar granules from cane grown in the Brisbane Botanical Gardens, demonstrating its potential as a commercial crop in Queensland.

Eaton and others formed the Maryborough Sugar Company in August 1865 and purchased 400 acres (160 ha) at Tinana for a plantation and mill.

[1] Local timber millers Frederick Gladwell and Robert Greathead decided to construct a central mill that would process cane from a number of surrounding farms.

In July 1866 tender notices were placed in the Maryborough Chronicle for the manufacture of 50,000 bricks for mill buildings and for the erection of a "New Sugar Manufactory".

Although by September 1867 a fine light brown sugar was being produced, the problems of the business were compounded by an explosion and by a labour shortage caused by the discovery of gold at Gympie.

[1] The Australian Joint Stock Bank foreclosed on the mortgage and plant from the operation was sold at auction in Sydney in December 1867.

[1] In early November 1868 the Maryborough Chronicle reported that the mill's end of season production was estimated to be 70 long tons (71 t) of sugar and 75 hogsheads of rum.

This had been established by Tooth & Cran in 1867 and was upgraded in 1871 to be a large modern refinery producing a high quality white sugar.

Central mills servicing independent white farmers replaced the big plantations run by indentured labour, licenses to recruit Melanesian workers having ceased after December 1890.

A number of plantations and mills closed and, by 1892, it was reported that much of the land along the Mary River was no longer under cultivation, or was growing crops other than sugar.

The major visible built features on the site are:[1] Central Sugar Mill Ruins was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register on 5 December 2005 having satisfied the following criteria.

The remains include characteristic features of a sugar mill and refinery including chimneys, underground vats, partial formations of a cane tramway and a dam which illustrate the processes involved[1] This Wikipedia article was originally based on "The Queensland heritage register" published by the State of Queensland under CC-BY 3.0 AU licence (accessed on 7 July 2014, archived on 8 October 2014).