Local Woman Outs Herself As A North Queenslander By Showcasing In-Depth Knowledge Of Australia’s $2.5B Sugarcane Industry

CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT

A seemingly urbanised woman has today shocked her new city friends by accidentally revealing that she might be from some proper North Queensland stock.

After moving south to Sydney for a masters degree, Bella Farrugia (20) has only ever said she’s ‘from Queensland’.

Many of her new friends assumed this meant Brisbane or the Goldie, and like most southerners, they didn’t care to ask much more about the world that exists out there beyond Byron.

But it sees Bella is from a little further than beyond. She’s from the tropics.

During a cute little hang out in the park over a couple of iced coffees with some friends from uni, the conversation then turned to what the difference is between ‘raw sugar and ‘normal sugar’.

Nobody expected such a thorough answer.

“Well, basically” began Bella.

“At the sugar mill, the juice is extracted from the sugar cane stalk through a crushing process. The sugar crystals are then extracted from the juice. That’s called raw sugar. It’s the main product of Australian sugarcane. But there’s also molasses, ethanol, fertilisers, mulch even pharmaceuticals”

This is far too much information for an idle chit chat, but Bella’s expertise is impressive enough for everyone to let her cook.

“Anyway, from there you send the raw sugar to the refinery where the crystals are washed and dissolved in hot water. that’s how you remove the colours and impurities, that’s what gives you pure sugar which is boiled and seeded with fine sugar crystals.”

“Then they tumble dry the crystals to remove moisture. That’s the normal sugar”

Bella’s friends stare at her in disbelief. Why and how does she know so much about this?

There’s even more confusion when Bella reveals that she didn’t actually grow up on a sugarcane farm, but just absorbed this information by simply being from North Queensland.

The cats out of the bag, Bella may as well go full FNQ and let these new friends known that sugarcane is a ratooning crop that will regrow for up to five or six years before needing to be replanted due to soil health.

She’s also met Bob Katter multiple times. The first time was at the Italian Festival in Ingham when she was a kid. The other time was at the old Dairy Farmers Stadium during the fan day after the Cowboys won their first NRL grand final. And three different occassions at both Townsville and Cairns airpot.