Editing CSR Limited (section)

====Queensland==== 
The Queensland Government passed an Act in 1881 allowing CSR to acquire large amounts of land in the north of the colony and to invest £500,000 in establishing sugar plantations in these areas.<ref name="CSR">{{cite book |last1=Lowndes |first1=A.G. |title=South Pacific Enterprise |date=1956 |publisher=Angus & Robertson |location=Sydney}}</ref> The two major CSR plantations created at this time were the [[Victoria Plantation, Queensland|Victoria Plantation]] and the [[Homebush, Queensland|Homebush Plantation]]. [[Blackbirding|Blackbirded]] [[South Sea Islander]] labour was utilised by CSR to deforest the land, plant and cut the sugarcane, and build the mills. Knox and the company's Queensland director [[Edward Barrow Forrest|E.B. Forrest]] chartered blackbirding vessels to bring Islanders to the plantations.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4487558 |title=PACIFIC ISLANDERS COMPENSATION COURT. |newspaper=[[The Brisbane Courier]] |volume=XLI |issue=8,768 |location=Queensland, Australia |date=20 February 1886 |accessdate=30 December 2021 |page=3 |via=National Library of Australia |archive-date=11 August 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220811050932/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/blank |url-status=live }}</ref> The 1884 recruiting voyage of ''Hopeful'' blackbirding labour vessel which kidnapped and murdered many Islanders was under contract to deliver labourers to Ebenezer Cowley, manager of the Victoria Plantation.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article217692945 |title=REPORT OF ROYAL COMMISSION |newspaper=[[Toowoomba Chronicle and Darling Downs General Advertiser]] |issue=3328 |location=Queensland, Australia |date=9 May 1885 |accessdate=30 December 2021 |page=11 |via=National Library of Australia |archive-date=11 August 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220811050821/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/217692945 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3445804 |title=THE RETURNED ISLANDERS. |newspaper=[[The Brisbane Courier]] |volume=XL |issue=8,600 |location=Queensland, Australia |date=4 August 1885 |accessdate=30 December 2021 |page=6 |via=National Library of Australia |archive-date=11 August 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220811050827/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/3445804 |url-status=live }}</ref> An 1886 inquiry into this type of labour found that up to 60% of the Islanders transported to the Homebush Plantation had died within four years.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4494246 |title=PACIFIC ISLANDERS COMPENSATION COURT. |newspaper=[[The Brisbane Courier]] |volume=XLI |issue=8,770 |location=Queensland, Australia |date=23 February 1886 |accessdate=30 December 2021 |page=3 |via=National Library of Australia}}</ref> The kidnapping and deaths of these workers resulted in 111 Islanders being removed from the CSR plantations by the Queensland government and returned to their homelands in 1885. CSR was compensated £4,424 by the government for the loss of these labourers.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article19803734 |title=Pacific Islanders' Compensation Court. |newspaper=[[The Queenslander]] |volume=XXIX |issue=545 |location=Queensland, Australia |date=6 March 1886 |accessdate=31 December 2021 |page=368 |via=National Library of Australia}}</ref> CSR also experimented with cheap Chinese, Javanese, Singhalese and Japanese [[coolie]] labour on their plantations.<ref name="CSR" />

By the 1890s, Knox decided to abandon the plantation system in Queensland and return to the central mill method used in its New South Wales operations. CSR subdivided the Victoria and Homebush estates into small farms which it sold or leased to white farmers who would sell their cane to CSR to be processed at its nearby mills.<ref name="CSR" />