General News
17 September, 2026
Sawmillers making the cut
WILLIAM Ingham erected the first sawmill at Cairns in May 1877.
Ingham chose the mangrove mouth of Lily Creek on Trinity Inlet to collect the logs prior to processing.
Ingham’s workers were mainly indentured men from nearby Melanesian islands.
They readied rafts of cedar brought out of the Barron River mouth for shipment mainly to southern ports.
The mill’s machinery consisted of a 20-horse boiler attached a 10 horse power engine.
In June 1878, “the representative of one well-known Maryborough firm has gone up to look at the cedar and he tells me that some logs now lying at Ingham’s sawmills ... are superior in quality to anything he saw on the Daintree, Mossman or Johnstone Rivers, all of which he has just visited”.
“The same gentleman spoke very highly of some kauri pine logs lying at the above sawmills and intends to visit the pine scrubs at the head of the inlet before his departure.”
Sawmilling on the Lily Creek site continued with Johnston, a North of Ireland man and his French-born partner Louis Severin.
In one month in 1880, shipments from their mill included sawn timber for Cooktown and cedar planks for Townsville and Rockhampton.
Johnston and Severin were succeeded by James Kenny in partnership with James Lyons trading as Kenny & Co in 1882.
A sawmill was still in operation on this site up until the 1940s.
