Cabbage Tree Island is on the Richmond River in Ballina Shire, Northern Rivers region. This area is within Nyangbul country of the Bundjalung Nation. In 1892 the NSW Aborigines Protection Board gazetted the island as an Aboriginal reserve.
According to Bundjalung oral tradition, during the 1890s a group of Aboriginal people in north-eastern New South Wales (NSW) walked from Wyrallah near Lismore and crossed to Cabbage Tree Island. They aimed to take possession of the land and clear the thick scrub to begin cane farming.
They quickly became self-sufficient. Kitchen gardens provided fresh vegetables; orchards and banana plantations provided fresh fruit and the rearing of cattle provided fresh meat and milk. The establishment of cane farms on the island gave the community a sense of independence.
The rivers, and the estuarine, wetland and sand dune environments on and around Cabbage Tree Island provided an abundance of wild food. There were always plenty of resources to share among the community:
‘… In those days, it was nothing, you know, to go out there [and] get pipis and bring them home. There was plenty to eat … when they’d go, the men used to go up the creeks and early in the morning in the boat, and come back with all these wild foods … they’d have koala, kangaroo, water lily bulbs and swans’ eggs and ducks’ eggs … but everything was shared, that was the beauty of everything.’ Aunty Yvonne Del-Signore, interview 26 January 2005, Boundary Creek. [Planet Corroboree, 28 September 2016]
In 1911 Cabbage Tree Island's status was changed from reserve to station and the community lost its autonomy, freedom of movement and full right to farm the land. A non-Aboriginal man was installed a manager of the island and in practice farmed it on his own behalf.
It wasn't until the 1960s that autonomy began to be returned to Aboriginal families living on the island.
The February-March 2022 floods have devastated this small community.
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| Cabbage Tree Island as floods recede & post flood 2022 |
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