Ingham

About Ingham

Ingham is a town in north Queensland, about 110 kilometres north of Townsville, set within the Herbert River floodplain and surrounded by sugar cane farms. It is the administrative centre of the Hinchinbrook Shire and takes its name from William Bairstow Ingham, a pioneer sugar planter on the Herbert River; the township was gazetted in 1879. The district's Victoria Mill is the largest sugar mill in Australia, while the nearby Macknade Mill, opened in 1874, is Queensland's oldest operating sugar mill. From the 1890s northern Italian settlers were recruited to the sugar industry, and today more than half the town's residents are of Italian descent, giving Ingham the nickname 'Little Italy'. The town hosts the Australian-Italian Festival each August at the Tyto Wetlands, a restored wetland known for its large number of bird species.