Byron – A Geographic and Historical Overview
Story by Martine Borrack
Byron shire is part of a region that has one of the richest biodiversities (genes, species and ecosystems) in Australia.
It is a unique part of the world known to botanists as Macleay-McPherson Overlap. Whereas most parts of the world have either a desert or savannah land dividing the tropical and temperate zones, here we have the two merging between the Macleay River and the McPherson Range.
The result is an unusual yet uncompromising matrimony of temperate species from the south-east with subtropical species from the north, combining a myriad of animal species whose relationships with the environment remain inter-dependent.
This very special region came into being through many gradual changes in the climate over the last 20 million years. Other geographical factors also played a part such as the mountainous terrain which brought about high rainfall and the ancient volcanic eruptions of Mt Warning which created the rich, red soil upon which the Big Scrub grew.
Once Australia’s largest sub-tropical rainforest, The Big Scrub was densely populated with almost 1000 types of trees and shrubs.
Among the shire’s most outstanding natural assets are the jagged headland of Cape Byron, a 200 million year-old caldera which marks Australia’s most easterly point; pristine pockets of littoral and Big Scrub rainforests along the coast, significant estuaries teeming with birdlife, a state significant wetland (Cibum Margil), coastal swamp forests, grasslands and salt marshes of which worldwide examples are rare and rapidly disappearing. Byron Bay even boasts the largest remaining coastal clay heath left in the state of NSW (Arakwal National Park).
Significantly, Byron shire also has the highest number of threatened flora and fauna species in NSW, including some plant species whose core habitat is within the shire.
The Bunjalung nation of Indigenous people was the first to live and manage the land. They have been associated with the coastal area of Byron Bay and the north coast region for at least 22,000 years and are recognised as the traditional custodians of the land.
The Bunjalung nation consists of 13 or 14 tribes stretching from the Clarence to Logan Rivers. Byron shire was occupied by several dialectical groups - the Arakwal people to the south of the Cape Byron headland and Minjungbal people to the north. These tribes occupied their own distinctive territories but the headland was their geographical divide.
The headland, named Walgun, or ``the shoulder” by the Minjungbal people and now part of the Cape Byron State Conservation Area was a ceremonial and spiritual place. Although a number of significant heritage sites have been damaged and erased by development and time - (a 1000-year-old midden filled with pipi shells remains at the Pass) - the area nevertheless provides both traditional and cultural Aboriginal heritage significance.
Today, there are some 97 recognised Aboriginal heritage sites scattered throughout Byron shire including middens, burial sites and a Bora ring used for ceremonial occasions. These sites are part of the ongoing cultural and spiritual connection of the indigenous people to their land, or ``Country’’.
Also important to their connection to `Country’ are natural mythological sites such as the majestic Julian Rocks to the north–east of Cape Byron. Although today the 2 jutting rocks mark a significant jewel of the Cape Byron Marine Park, they remain culturally significant through the Dreamtime stories that have survived the generations.
One such story tells of how the 2 rocks were formed. The story decrees that a jealous husband threw his spear at a canoe carrying his wife and her lover. The canoe broke and sank, leaving only the bow and stern protruding from the sea.
The Indigenous people lived a plentiful life from the bounty of the sea, forests and rivers. Unlike inland tribes who led a more nomadic existence the coastal Aborigines had a more sedentary lifestyle in which ceremony played a big part.
But in 1770, with Captain Cooks discovery voyage of Australia, European occupation was only decades away. Captain Cook named the Cape after navigator Admiral John Byron who circumnavigated the world in 1766. Upon rounding the headland Cook was said to have observed the Aborigines on Tallows Beach. At that time estimates of the Aboriginal population in Byron shire was between 400 and 500.
The first European settlers arrived in the region in the 1840s and the first permanent settlers in 1860s. They were cedar cutter drawn by the promise of the giant red cedar found in the Big Scrub forest that fanned out from Byron and deep into the hinterland.
These first selectors purchased blocks of Crown land in 1861 at the price of 1 pound per acre. Their logging tracks and shoots scarred the landscape, spreading through the hinterland at Coopers shoot and cutting down through the bush to Tallows Beach where the awkward cargo was loaded onto ships for export.
In the 1880s Byron built its first post office and a small coastal village with a railway quickly sprung up to service the transport of timber and agricultural product. The construction of railway in 1894 and the Byron Jetty in 1886 became important for the development of Byron as the rush for timber slowed. Dairy men settled in the green plateaus of the hinterland and quickly a dairy industry developed with the eventual development of Norco.
The town’s name changed from Cavanba (the Minjungbal word for ``meeting place’’) to Byron Bay and the now famous lighthouse was built. The dairy industry grew and by 1939, 4000 dairy shareholders supplied Norco with product, making it the biggest butter factory in the southern hemisphere.
The port also made Byron Bay a perfect place to establish abattoirs when it was decided that a meat works were needed. Built at Belongil in 1912 it grew into one of the largest industries in the region sustaining families in employment during the depression years and on until well after the Second World War when meat was exported from Byron to America.
During the 1930s until 1960s sand mining works involving the extraction of minerals from the sand were carried out between Ballina and Brunswick Heads. Though short lived in the scale of time, the industry destroyed on the beaches what nature had over 1000s of years perfected. Sand mining caused irreparable degradation and erosion within the sand dunes, loss of native coastal vegetation and destroyed Aboriginal heritage sites.
Meanwhile nature prevailed and a cyclone in 1954 crippled the fishing industry after it destroyed more than 180 metres of Byron jetty. That same year the first whale was captured, giving birth to Byron’s whaling industry. Also short lived the whaling industry in Byron collapsed after just 8 years because whale numbers plummeted.
Whereas the focus of Byron’s economy since European settlement had been on primary product, which changed with the arrival of the early surfers in the 1960s who found great waves in an idyllic and sun-drenched playground.
By the late 60s and early 1970s with the radicalisation of politics and cultural shifts in the wider Australian community, Byron’s natural beauty came to symbolise what the first colourful young hippies were seeking. The Aquarius festival in Nimbin in 1973 sealed that and put Byron on the map as an alternative Mecca.
Alternative life stylers, musicians and artists all flocked to the region and the 1980s and 1990s. They were closely followed by the sea-changers who cast off careers and downsized to be part of a Community. In the decade 1986 to 1996 Byron shire’s population more than doubled, census figures that year setting it at 27,568. Eco-tourism, alternative healing and herbal medicine, permaculture and organic farming have become the new economy.
Essentially a small coastal village, Byron has made its mark as a town that bursts with energy, love, vibrancy and promise. It has a unique feel that has made it an international Mecca and meeting place where everything except intolerance is tolerated.
And so fittingly in the pre-millennium climate of reconciliation, Byron shire residents - both indigenous and white - found a medium through which to recognise, reconcile and celebrate our ancient and recent past.
The medium came in the form of a native title claim by the Byron Bay Arakwal people over Byron Bay.
The historic agreement which was reached in 1995, two years after they lodged their claim with the state government, formally recognises the Arakwal people as the traditional custodians of Byron Bay. It also guaranteed them a role in the management of the Cape Byron Reserve and awarded land to them for housing and land to construct a cultural centre (at Paterson Street).
In 2001 the agreement was extended with the formalisation of the Indigenous Land Use Agreement, giving the Arakwal people joint management rights with the National Parks and Wildlife Services over the newly gazetted Arakwal National Park.
The establishment of the 183ha park has ensured the ongoing protection and conservation of numerous natural assets and Aboriginal cultural heritage sites. It will also provide the indigenous community ongoing cultural links to their land.
The park extends from Cosy corner to Broken Head, takes in 3 kms of unpatrolled beaches along Tallows and stretches 3 kms out to sea, also giving the Arakwal people involvement in the management of the Cape Byron Marine Park.
This is the 4th marine park to be created in NSW and is 22,000ha in size. It was established in 2002 to research, protect and conserve dwindling stocks and threatened species of marine, plant, bird and invertebrate life.
Today Byron’s population shire wide is at 30,000 with 9000 in Byron Bay itself.
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