I will always remember my first taste of sugar cane.

It was more years ago than I’d like to remember but not long enough for me to forget.

Dad had taken us on a family trip from Victoria up to Northern New South Wales and Queensland, to let Grandpa meet up with family and friends where he had grown up.

He would probably turn in his grave now to know what the place has become.

His first farm was in the Coomera Valley ... so goodness knows how much that property in the shadow of Mt Tamborine must be worth today.

Instead, in the early 1900s he and Grandma packed up the family and caught a coastal steamer from Byron Bay to Sydney then a train to Melbourne to take up some land that was being opened up in West Gippsland.

So there we were all those years later. Stopped by the side of the road just south of Maclean on the Clarence River.

Dad ducked into the canefield and brought back a length of sugar cane which he broke and sunk his teeth into.

It had been half a lifetime since he had done that. And you could see by the smile on his face the memories it brought back.

To me, the cane was sickly sweet. Yet it was just one of new experiences on that trip.

Imagine the way our eyes popped when we hit Surfers Paradise - American-style motels called the Silver Dollar and El Dorado, water ski shows on the Nerang River.

Today, the sugar cane industry is still viable in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales and from Bundaberg north to Cairns.

Yet the canefields on the Sunshine Coast have been pretty dormant since the closure of the Moreton Mill at Nambour more than four years ago. I never thought we would see that.

The cane trains moving slowly down Howard Street and across Currie Street were as Queensland as ... well as Queensland as XXXX, as Queensland as Wally Lewis, as Queensland as Bundaberg Rum.

By keeping much of the 13,000ha of canelands it is hoped to retain the character of the Sunshine Coast.

This is in the face of increasing pressure to open up more land for housing and commercial development.

The problem is much of the caneland is in the Maroochy River flood plain.

And the South East Queensland Regional Plan only allows development of caneland east of the Sunshine Motorway.

A new CSIRO report has recommended action on finding sustainable uses for the caneland. Those findings will be presented at the next Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA) Sunshine Coast breakfast meeting on June 12.

As I said, who would have thought we would be discussing the future of our caneland.

Then again, we look to Wally Lewis for his sideline comments during State of Origin football. And Bundaberg Rum is owned by a multi-national company.