Just north of Cardwell along the coast is a small town called Tully. Tullys claim to fame is that it has the most rainfall of any city in Australia. On average, the annual rainfall in Tully is 4 meters! To brag about this, Tully residents have built an enormous Golden Gumboot. A gumboot is basically a boot that people wear in the rain, I guess. The Golden Gumboot is 7.9 meters tall and represents the record amount of rainfall in Tully, back in 1950. My main reasons for stopping in Tully were to take a tour of the sugar mill and to attend the first annual Golden Gumboot Festival! Yup, I couldn't miss that!

The Tully Sugar Mill was pretty interesting. Our guide took us through the entire mill and explained the sugar making process, from:

1. Weighing the bins of sugar cane and dumping them onto the conveyer after they are transported to the factory by rail.
2. Shredding the cane into fibers and running them through presses that extract as much cane juice as possible from them.
3. Removal of impurities from the cane juice by adding lime which causes the impurities to settle to the bottom of the tank.
4. Evaporating off more water until the juice turns into a syrup.
5. Converting the syrup into crystals and spinning them in a centrifuge.
6. Drying the sugar crystals before they are loaded onto the truck and shipped away!

Tully was full of backpackers who are employed doing seasonal work, either working at the sugar mill or on the Banana Plantations. From the sounds of it, its pretty good money, I met a guy at the campground who has been working putting bananas in bags, and makes 85 cents per bag! Of course he has to deal with working outdoors in Tully where its normally raining, and frequently encountering all kinds of snakes and spiders, but he didn't seem to mind.

Later in the evening, I went to the Golden Gumboot Festival! Yeeeee Haw! What a hoot. Actually it wasn't all that exciting - I'd say the highlights of the evening were the Mr. and Ms. Golden Gumboot competition, where the entrants wore dresses and gumboots painted in gold, the gumboot throwing contest, and the banana packing contest. There was also a special appearance by the Queensland Banana, who was campaining against importing foreign bananas. Pretty interesting day all around, but I wouldn't consider Tully to be the most exciting place on earth.