Cabbage Tree Island families now have permission to rebuild their community after more than two years of forced flood exile

 

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]

By the time the February-March 2022 record breaking floods swept across Cabbage Tree Island it had been resettled for the last 137 years and, there were 24 families living on this river island. Many of whom are directly descendent from the original Ngangbul people who had resettled this traditional land around 1885.

ABC News, 29 October 2024:

An Aboriginal community in northern NSW has voted to rebuild its island home almost three years after it was abandoned due to flooding.

Nineteen houses will be rebuilt on Cabbage Tree Island near Ballina at a cost of $30 million, funded by the New South Wales Reconstruction Authority and the National Emergency Management Agency.

A further $13 million has been allocated to the rebuild of community infrastructure including the Cabbage Tree Island Public School and local health centre.

Jali Local Aboriginal Land Council said the decision marked a momentous turnaround from 12-months ago when the state government and the land council deemed the island too high risk for habitation.

At the time the NSW Planning and Environment Department wrote to the land council saying the "risks are so high they cannot in good faith financially support a rebuild on the island for residential purposes".

Chairperson Kylie Jacky said the community had worked together since then to revisit the consultation process and ensure everyone's voices were heard.

"It's been too long, and our families and community members from Cabbage Tree Island have suffered," Ms Jacky said.

"We were not listening to the collective voices of our community. I really feel we lost our way in relation to that.

"Government and other agencies need to hear this. If you are only listening to one, two, or five or six voices you are not listening to the collective community.

"You need to listen."

Ms Jacky said residents were keen to move out of a temporary housing village in nearby Wardell as soon as possible and would be working to renovate and retrofit their homes using flood-resilient materials over the next 12 months.

She said phase two of the island's rebuild would be to apply for development applications to raise the houses above the one-in-100 year flood level.

"We will build back better," she said.

"We are a community that experiences and knows floods. It's in our old people's DNA.

"Moving forward we will be a flood-resilient community and we will work with government and other agencies about what that means."

"I just want to get back to seeing the kids roam and enjoying the outdoor space as much as they can."

Resident Maddison James said he could not wait to get his family out of the pod village at Wardell and back onto the island where he grew up.

"Connecting to country, go out fishing with them, do things that we did as kids and build memories," he said.

Jali Local Aboriginal Land Council is working to get residents back into their homes within the next 12 months (ABC North Coast: Hannah Ross )

The full article can be read at

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-29/land-council-votes-to-rebuild-flood-prone-island-home/104531922

Nineteen long months after record flooding swept across much of the NSW Northern Rivers region and the future of Cabbage Tree Island is still unresolved

The impacts of disaster mismanagement on a grand scale by the former NSW Coalition Government continues rolling across the Cabbage Tree Island community.

Cabbage Tree Island on the Richmond River, NSW 
Google Earth image retrieved 22 October 2023

Echo, local news, 19 October 2023:

The fate of the residents of Cabbage Tree Island is still unclear, as stakeholders continue with more meetings and court appearances in the hopes of finding a resolution.

The Department of Planning and Environment (DPE) have clarified that the land title to Cabbage Tree Island is held by Jali Local Aboriginal Land Council, and that the post-flood assessment reports were commissioned by Jali Local Aboriginal Land Council (LALC) and Aboriginal Affairs NSW.

Jali LALC says that members voted on August 28 to demolish the homes on Cabbage Tree Island.

Aunty Susan Anderson says she owns the land and the houses at Cabbage Tree Island, which was passed down by her grandfather. Photo Tree Faerie

An affidavit submitted to the NSW Land and Environment Court by resident Susan Anderson says that she is one of the senior elders and custodian over the land at Cabbage Tree Island.

She states that it was her grandfather who survived a massacre at Evans Head, and that he and his brother-in-law were granted the land Cabbage Tree island in the 1880s.

She says that in 1983 following the NSW Aboriginal Land Rights Act, Cabbage Tree Island came into the possession of the newly set up Jali Local Aboriginal Land Council.

‘The land council was supposed to assist the community get decent houses and infrastructure’, she says.

‘The residents, my people, have been treated so appallingly following the mass evacuation at the time of the flood in February 22. They were shuffled all over the place throughout the area, as far as the Gold Coast.

The affidavit says the land council would not consult with them about what was happening, and she says they were bullied, threatened and shouted down.

’In my many years I’ve seen lots of injustice to our people, but this situation is something hard to describe. We are being made refugees in our own land. We are being forced to reside in a temporary pod village while perfectly good houses stand empty.’

Anderson says that the final burden placed upon them was at the meeting on August 28, in which the demolition and no return for residents was pushed through, ‘without any regard to meeting protocol or fairness’.

Aunty Susan’s nephew, Troy Anderson, has been a member of the Jali LALC board for over ten years.

He also submitted an affidavit in which he says that during the motion for demolition, it was obvious that there was no agreement from the membership, who were expressing quite a lot of anxiety and serious sentiments.

‘At this point, the facilitators had no choice, but to close the meeting which they did’.

The matter is yet to be heard in Land and Environment Court. In the meantime, Jali has called an extraordinary meeting for members. The agenda is to either rescind the current motion to demolish the housing on Cabbage Tree Island or to put a new motion to rebuild residential houses on Cabbage Tree Island. They are also seeking to pass a motion to lobby the NSW government to fund the rebuilding of housing on Cabbage Tree Island.

The Echo is yet to receive a response from Jali Land Council with our requests for comments.

It is understood that Jali LALC will be holding that meeting in the auditorium at Ballina RSL later today Monday, 23 October at 5.30pm.

Cabbage Tree Island 2 April - post Northern NSW Floods Feb-March 2022 the island community's homes are in ruin and its families scattered and longing to return home

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.

Cabbage Tree Island as floods recede & post flood 2022

Northern Rivers Flood February-March 2022: surveying the aftermath from the air in Lismore, Ballina and beyond

From Northern Rivers activist film maker Cloudcatcher Media's March 2022 flood aftermath in Lismore, Ballina and beyond....

 

 

Widespread flooding began in earnest in the Northern Rivers region around 24 February 2022, but entered record level territory in some areas on Saturday 26, Sunday 27 and Monday 28 February.