Tully
Postcode: 4854
Tully is a small town in Queensland, Australia, adjacent to the Bruce Highway and by road approximately 140km south of Cairns and 210km north of Townsville.
The Tully River (previously known as the Mackay River) was named after Surveyor-General William Alcock Tully in the 1870s. The town of Tully was then named after the river (previously it had been known as Banyan).
With an average annual rainfall exceeding 4000mm, and the highest ever annual rainfall in a populated area of Australia (7900mm in 1950), Tully is arguably the wettest town in Australia – a rivalry exists between Tully and the nearby town of Babinda for said title. In 2003 a giant gumboot (the “Golden Gumboot”) was erected as a monument to the town’s climate; it also serves as a museum documenting past floods, as well as displaying the current rainfall for the year.
Tully, with a population of approximately 3500, is the largest town and the administrative centre of the Cardwell Shire. The economic base of the region is agriculture; sugar cane and bananas being the dominant crops grown. The sugar cane grown at the many farms in the district is processed locally at the Tully Sugar Mill to give raw sugar which is shipped elsewhere for refinement.