Burdekin

Distinguished and Famous people from Burdekin

⛳ Karrie Webb

Karrie Webb grew up in Ayr in a family that played golf, starting with plastic clubs before graduating to real ones as a child. She turned professional in 1994 and went on to win seven major championships and enter the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2005. Her later achievements included a senior LPGA major in 2022. The Burdekin connection is the beginning of the story: a local childhood and family game that developed into one of Australia's most accomplished international sporting careers.

🏭 Bob Russell

Bob Russell’s association with the Burdekin was a working one: as a Pioneer Sugar Mills director and later chairman, he regularly visited the Pioneer Mill near Brandon and the Inkerman Mill near Home Hill. A former grazier and wartime pilot, he took an interest in both machinery and the people keeping rural businesses running. Under his leadership the company expanded and diversified into other activities. His home was elsewhere, so the local connection is the documented business responsibility and repeated inspections, rather than residence. The district forms a substantial part of his career in Queensland sugar.

⚙️ Roly Behne

Roly Behne brought scientific research into the everyday business of making sugar. After work with Queensland’s Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations, he joined Pioneer Sugar Mills as assistant manager at Inkerman in 1947, became mill manager in 1949 and managing director of the company in 1952. His earlier investigations into cane preparation helped improve extraction, while his later responsibilities included mill upgrades and industry research. He also represented the Lower Burdekin in the Australian Sugar Producers’ Association. This was a career in which laboratory methods, machinery and management met at the mill, with practical consequences for a major local industry.