Byron Bay Blog

Beautiful Byron Bay, where the pimply youth and bespectacled old skateboard and walking-frame around each other. Where babies are nourished with progressive nurturing and the elderly are called Elders. And all those in-between are given freedom, choice and a huge non-judgemental stage for trial and error and creative expression. Byron Bay, nestled in the rural farming lands and the seaside tourist lands of Byronshire is truly a unique and inspiring place for both locals, interstate and international visitors. Today Byron Bay has a diverse and ever changing dynamic tapestry.

So what makes the fabric of this harmonious and forward thinking culture? The history of a town is a great place to start … its evolution reveals everything. A town’s geographical placement dictates its whole identity. I know it’s a little far back, but please bear with me as we start …

More than 20 Million Years Ago
The Northern Rivers region (you could say that Byron Bay was the infamous capital) was carved out by a volcanic eruption that started 20 million or so years ago. Its lava flow covered more than 5000 square kilometres in all directions, and about 100 kilometres out to sea, forming what is today the largest shield volcanic caldera in the Southern Hemisphere.

The original name for Mt Warning, the remnant plug of the volcano, is Wollumbin, which means ‘cloud catcher’. It remains an important sacred site to the local Arakwal and Bundjalung Aboriginal people.

Byron Bay was called ‘Cavvanba’ by the Bunjalong people and it was the common territory of their northern and southern tribes, the Minjangbal and the Arakwal.
Sighting and Documenting by Captain Cook in 1770

Captain James Cook and his ship the Endeavour sailed past Australia’s most easterly point in May 1770. He re-named the headland Cape Byron and the striking mountain Mount Warning, to serve as a warning to seafarers traversing the treacherous reefs along the coast. Master of HMS Rainbow, William Johns, mapped the bay and its three rocks in 1828.

Settlers Arrive in the 1800s
White settlers arrived in the region in the late 1840s. The area was surrounded by subtropical rainforest that covered about 10,000 hectares, affectionately known as the Big Scrub. Within 40 years most of this was cleared to make way for sugar cane, cattle and dairy farmers who took advantage of the rich alluvial deposits on the caldera floor.

Captain Rous named the Brunswick River to honour Queen Caroline of Brunswick (in Germany) and it because the hive of timber harvesting when the cedar cutters first moved into to clear the area in the 1850s.

Byron Bay Town is Born in the 1880s

The village of Cavanbah was surveyed in 1884 and in December 1885, 200 lots were sold in the first speculative land sale.

In 1888, the post office was established. A town was born. In 1894, the name of the town changed from Cavanbah to Byron Bay and in 1894, the railway route between Lismore and Murwillumbah opened.

In the same year, a jetty was opened at Byron Bay and it quickly became a busy shipping centre to transport timber and agricultural products - although many ships became stranded or sunk.

The 1320-foot jetty, which was built over two years from 1886 to 1888, stood at the end of Jonson Street.

Some of the early cedar cutters became the first permanent settlers in the Byron Bay region in the 1860s and when legislation was passed in 1861 that enabled anyone to select a block of Crown land at one pound per acre, the first European land owners, known as ’selectors’, settled in the area.

Cedar cutters made occasional camps at the bay and logs were shipped from Tallow Beach. At Palm Valley under the Cape, David Jarman had a half way house for those travelling the beaches from Ballina to Brunswick.

When the rush for timber was slowing and dairymen were starting to settle the land. Cows were milked by hand and cream skimmed off settling pans for butter. New centrifugal separators took cream from milk quickly and hygienically. The cream was then churned to butter. A number of separating stations had been established in the district.

The jetty and the railway at Byron Bay made it the obvious choice. A co-operative was formed in 1895 to provide cold storage for perishable goods from the district, to manufacture, store, sell and export milk and dairy products, and to make and sell ice. This was the beginning of Norco, and the plant was built beside the railway line.

But the first farmers had trouble with poor natural grasses and the industry didn’t begin to grow until Mr Edwin Seccombe found on his Wollongbar farm that paspalum (grass) improved his butter production. The factory at Byron Bay was the ultimate beneficiary of this discovery as farmers improved their pastures. The manufacture of butter trebled in five years from 1899 to 1904. The factory expanded its operations to become one of the biggest butter factories in the world.

With the growth of the pig industry on the north coast, a small goods section was added to the Co-op’s commercial operation. This was highly successful and its bacon and canned processed meats became famous.

By 1939 4,000 dairy shareholders from the Richmond to the Tweed supplied Norco at the Bay. The processing plant employed 350 people in the district and ships took products to the world.

It was the port facilities at the Bay which gave it the edge when a meat works was to be built. Named the Byron Bay Co-op Canning and Freezing Co Ltd, it was formed in 1912, the plant was built along the sea shore near Belongil. It began operations in 1913, and had a fitful life until it closed down in 1920.

It was not until Mr A W Anderson came along, with his chain of butcher shops, that the works became viable. He took over in 1930, depression days.

Historic Pictures of Byron Bay

Infrastructure Develops in Early 1900s
In the first decade of the 20th century, sporting, musical and other interest groups were founded and this helped forge community infrastructure like hotels, stores and local media etc and the town of Byron Bay was established.

The famous Byron Bay lighthouse took two years to build and was completed in 1901. It was regarded as a significant event in the district. A banquet was arranged and special trains carried visitors from Lismore and Murwillumbah for the opening by the premier - whose arrival was delayed. Bad weather in the waters off the Cape prevented the dignitaries from landing before dawn the day after the official proceedings were due to take place. This would not be the last time such official proceedings were disrupted by late arrivals, but the Byron locals quickly learned to party in the meantime as they waited for their guests.

The first stationmaster at the Byron Bay Railway Station was appointed in 1904 and the refreshment room (which is today the ‘Rails Hotel’) was opened in 1908.

When the Local Government Act was passed in 1906, the government appointed a provisional Council until the first elections later that year.

In 1906, the local newspaper of the time reported the arrival of the first party of tourists to visit the Brunswick Valley, although other reports suggest that travellers had arrived on foot much earlier.

The first letterboxes received mail in 1908 and, during the following year, the first telephone exchange opened with eight subscribers.
Growth Despite Adversity During the War Years

When World War I was raging in Europe, the population of Byron Bay had grown to 1500.

The first electricity to the town, powered by Mullumbimby’s hydroelectric works in Wilsons Creek, was switched on in 1926.

Work on a new jetty was nearing completion in 1928 and it officially opened the following year. It was an important lifeline for the town, accommodating rail carriages that ran along it and to the railway station.

The late 1930’s saw the beginning of sand mining which extracted zircon, rutile, and other minerals from the rich deposits in the beaches between Ballina and Brunswick Heads. The company, Zircon Rutile Ltd returned in the 1960’s to re-work the sand with more refined extraction techniques. The plant was in Jonson Street where the Plaza shopping centre now stands.

Byron Bay weathered the storm of the 1930s depression better than most of Australia because of its butter and meat industries. Surprisingly, during the height of the depression, the meatworks re-opened after closing its doors seven years earlier and provided work to the unemployed.

During the 1930s and after World War II, the number of organisations, clubs and societies operating in the region continued to grow and were often the impetus for the development of community services like sporting fields, road improvements and sanitation.

Post War Prosperity - 1945-1960
Byron Bay enjoyed prosperity in the post-war years. Land values exploded and literary events, theatre, cinema, musical recitals, concerts and dances were well attended, as were sporting events.

But in 1954 a cyclone demolished more than 600 feet of the jetty at Byron Bay, along with the local fishing fleet. It effectively annihilated the local fishing industry and as local historical documenter Maurice Ryan says ‘wrote the obituary notice of Byron Bay as a sea port’. Parts of the town also flooded when the fierce winds cut through sands disturbed by mining - a legacy that can be witnessed today at Belongil Beach and in the May 2009 storm that legacy creeps closer to disaster.

Fortunately, many locals took heed of nature’s warnings and more progressive approaches to the environment were considered. Even before the arrival of hippies in the 1970s, Byron’s local developers steered away from high-rise buildings.

Whaling from 1954 to 1962 (of course whaling is now illegal in Australia)
The remnants of the old jetty had been removed in 1947. After the cyclone, the remainder of the new jetty was re-decked and used for whaling, which emerged in the wake of the fishing industry’s decline. The first whale was caught in 1954; only two years after Australia ’s eastern seaboard whaling industry had commenced in Moreton Bay.

It’s hard to imagine the ignorance that powered the whale industry. Hard to conceive that it was believed there was an endless supply. In the early days of the industry, whale oil was liquid gold. Whale meat was used to feed hungry pets.

The whaling industry in Byron Bay had a short life. In July 1954, the first whale was taken for Mr Anderson’s Byron Bay Whaling Co. The whaling station was built next to his meat works, handy to the railway line. His quota was for 120 humpback whales. This was increased to 150 in 1959, but the yield was lower than at first, and it continued to decline.

However, it was a relatively transient industry, although the decimation was undoubtedly dire. Within only eight years, whale numbers had plummeted and the industry was no longer sustainable. Happily this curtain closed in 1962 for another Byron Bay industry.

1960s Heralds Alternative Approaches
The ‘Save the Whale’ campaign in the 1970s signalled the beginnings of a new fascination with Byron Bay. As the whale population slowly recovered after global opposition to their slaughter, people returned to the Cape to watch their annual migration. Whale watching started to be a vital part of the area’s ecotourism.

Independent travellers were attracted to Byron for myriad reasons but the fertile environment and dramatic landscape were the first drawcards - just as they had been for the indigenous peoples thousands of years earlier.

In the early 60s, the first motels were built in Byron. One of the first was called the Surfside and was located on the site of the current Beach Hotel.

The Nimbin valley, which had been for thousands of years a special place for the Bundjalung peoples with its significant sacred sites, ceremonial grounds and initiation places, attracted the interest of a group of students from Canberra University.

At the time, Nimbin’s economy was in decline after the UK ceased importing Australian butter.

The last butter was made at Byron Bay ’s Norco factory in 1972. The Norco operation, which had produced its first butter in 1895 under the label ‘BBB - Byron Bay Butter’, had become synonymous with the town. The world was changing. While the brand still exists today, the company’s most important legacy was as the foundation of what became a major national industry.

1973 Aquarius Festival the Dawn of a New Era
The Aquarius organisers approached the local Aboriginal elders for permission to hold a festival in Nimbin. It signified an important step. The new thinkers’ respect for the indigenous people, their land and their culture was not only fundamental to the importance of reconciliation.

Students and hippies flocked to the area for the festival in 1973 and many just never left. Two decades of new settlers and alternative lifestylers began to repopulate the area and another set of pioneers established themselves around Mullumbimby and Mainarm. The community sharing of land, legally known as a multiple occupancy or ‘MO’, was conceived.

In place of the dairy industry, producers turned to new land uses to cultivate tropical fruit, macadamia and tea tree plantations while other land owners subdivided and built houses.

In the 1970s, it was not only those who pursued alternative lifestyles who started to open their eyes to the futility of environmental pollution.

In 1976 The Thursday Plantation was established, so-called because it was the day its owner was granted a Crown Lease at Bungawalbyn. It paved the way for yet another limelight industry in the region. However, alternative, complementary and bush medicine, along with organic farming, have so far proven to be more robust and sustainable than other industries.

As Global Greed Escalates in the 80s
As the Aquarius Festival pioneers matured, many started doing a new type of business. Today, many of these businesses have emerged as legitimate alternatives to commerce that are slowly bringing about shifts in the mainstream.

In the 80s, Nicholas Shand and his family moved back to their ‘MO’ in Mullumbimby from the UK and founded the Byron Echo with David Lovejoy. Today it is still independently owned and is the platform for discourse among those who want to protect the region from the pressure to conform to globalisation and big business.

In 1988, Thursday Plantation moved from the pristine wetlands of Bungawalbyn to fading farmland north of Ballina. Now the leading tea tree oil producer in the world, the move represented a major land rehabilitation program because it showed how otherwise marginalised land could be put to good use.

People Come to Byron to Get back to Basics in the 21st century
Today, less than one percent of the subtropical rainforest that once formed the Big Scrub remains as isolated pockets in nature reserves and World Heritage listed National Parks. The new highway makes Byron more accessible than ever before less than 2 hours from Brisbane and 9 hours to Sydney by car.

The independent travel grapevine is still a buzz with talk of the area, cementing its place as a destination for thousands of international backpackers and domestic voyagers. The march of progress of course invites the lament of those fortunate enough to have known Byron when it was one of the ‘best kept secrets’.

In the late 90s and early 21st century, a new wave of settlers started moving to Byron Bay. They are the pioneers of the new knowledge era and networked economy. While many are people who do business and communicate over the Internet, a core group are also dedicated to getting back to basics. There are writers, artists and filmmakers. Digital media producers and content creators. Organic horticulturalists and bush food growers. Great chefs, cooks and pastry makers. Tourist operators and tranquil service staff. And those who are here to rest, reflect and recuperate.

It is apparent from reading the letters pages in the Echo, observing community and council debate, or even walking down the street, that locals and visitors alike still make up an incredibly diverse kaleidoscope. But many share a common vision to manage the tide of change more sustainably and to treat the earth and each other with greater compassion and respect.

2009 - Roll Out the Good Times
It’s 2009 and Byron Bay, Brunswick Heads and Mullumbimby are great siblings. They are there for each other, rarely have an altercation and each offer something unique. For most of its history Byron Bay has been a working man’s town. It’s only since the factories have closed and the many social and economic changes of our nation have created a wealth and luxury of time, money and travel that Byron Bay has become a playground.

The local population as well as the tourist population is steadily growing. More and more conscious planning and public passion steers the council into making the best decisions for the towns growth and infrastructure - not always pleasing all the people all of the time but definitely pleasing most of the people all of the time. As the economic crisis tightens its grip Byron looks forward with its usual flare; offers a relaxing, alternative, celebration of diversity and a way of being and living that perhaps is a great model for the rest of the world. Tourism brings most of the money into the shire and close behind export or services and products. Byronshire folk are creative, resourceful and hardworking … when they are not relaxing in the geographical splendour that they have resiliently stood for for all these years.

Byron Bay: roll with the punches, roll in the hills, roll in the hay, roll with the waves or roll a joint. It’s all here and we’re loving it.

See also:
Free Land in Wategos Beach Byron Bay
Historic Pictures of Byron Bay