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Gula Java - Bringing in the Cane |
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Activity outside the mill is incidental to the purpose of this project which concentrates on the process of converting sugar cane into sugar crystals. However, a brief review of cane harvesting and transport is essential to understanding the context of the process as a whole. In the 1970s when I first visited Java, the vast majority of cane came in by rail, there were relatively few trucks on the island and the roads in the cane areas were not capable of carrying them. Since then the railways and their stock have become increasingly life expired and road transport a more economic option. Additionally, although sugar cultivation has always been alternated with rice, farmers in many areas have given up growing sugar cane in favour of rice and other crops such as tobacco, fruit and vegetables. Much of the cane now grown is in marginal areas where no railway had ever been laid and would never be now. There has been an inexorable closure of field lines and those that are left are increasingly diesel operated. Of all the mills in Java, in 2003 only at Olean could a visitor reliably find steam hauled daylight trains in the fields, other mills which still used steam outside the mills at the time of compilation included Asembagus, Sindanglaut, Sumberharjo and Sragi although daylight activity was not consistent. Other mills still used steam in the yards, often with a run of up to 1km from the unloading point which can be quite photogenic. |
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