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

National Parks & Wildlife consulting over future of Wollumbin summit track

 

Wollumbin
IMAGE: Visit North Coast NSW

Echo NetDaily, 22 January 2021:

A number of traditional custodians of the sacred site have called for non-Indigenous people to refrain from undertaking the five-hour trek.

Up to 100,000 people climb the mountain each year, according to tourism data. However, some leave rubbish such as soiled toilet paper by the side of the track and at the stunning peak.

The track has been closed for much of the past year owing to COVID-19, and it now appears it may stay that way.

A safety audit and an engineering assessment conducted during the closure have identified significant safety issues with the final climb to the Wollumbin summit.

These include an ‘extreme risk of landslide, rockfall and failure of the chain section of the track’.

A spokesperson from the National Parks and Wildlife Service said the current closure had been extended, at least until May.

Tellingly, the spokesperson also said that the future of the summit track was now under consideration.

This was being done in consultation with various key stakeholders, including the traditional owners of the site.

‘We understand that locals and visitors may be disappointed by the extended closure, however our main priority must always be to ensure the safety of visitors and staff,’ the spokesperson said.

‘We will now consider the future of the Summit track, in consultation with key community and tourism stakeholders, including Aboriginal Elders and knowledge holders.’

Wollumbin, which means ‘cloud catcher’ in some Aboriginal languages, is a traditional place of cultural law, initiation and spiritual education for the people of the Bundjalung Nation.

Under Bundjalung law, only certain people can climb the summit.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service asks visitors to respect the wishes of the local Indigenous mob and ‘avoid climbing this very difficult track’.

Yaegl elder Ron Heron honoured by Macquarie University on 23 September 2014

Macquarie University media release:

Vice-Chancellor Professor S Bruce Dowton, Mr (Uncle) Ronald Heron (Doctor of Letters), and Deputy Chancellor Elizabeth Crouch

Senior Indigenous elder Uncle Ron Heron receives honorary doctorate

23 September 2014

Ronald Heron, a highly respected senior elder of the of the Yaegl Aboriginal people of Northern New South Wales, and an anthropologist, historian and former university lecturer, will be recognised with a Doctor of Letters honoris causa from Macquarie University on Tuesday, 23 September.

The award will be granted in an afternoon graduation ceremony for students of the Faculty of Science, with Heron’s family and friends coming to Sydney for this special occasion.

“We are delighted to confer this award upon Uncle Ron, who has contributed so much to the endeavours of this University through science, education and leadership,” said Vice-Chancellor Professor S. Bruce Dowton. “He provides a remarkable example of the power of education; not only in his own life but in how he has touched and shaped so many others.”

Since 2002, Uncle Ron – as he is known – has worked with Macquarie University researchers on a cooperative project studying and testing medicines made from native plants. With Heron as a key supporter, the Macquarie team started education programs in local schools aimed at providing pathways through high school and tertiary study, now a national initiative in the National Indigenous Science Experience Program.

“This award is a great honour and means so much, not only for myself, but for all of my people of Yaegl and Bundjalung Country,” says Heron. “I feel enormous pride – I have come a long way from a tin hut.  It is up there with the very best.  I thank Macquarie University for this opportunity.”

Born in the Clarence Valley in 1947, Heron was schooled in the prevailing mission system of the day. He worked until his early thirties cutting and burning cane and picking peas before moving into a role as an Aboriginal Drug and Alcohol counsellor.

He moved to Canberra and graduated in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Letters, by thesis (now Masters of Letters), in prehistory and anthropology. Heron then lectured for 10 years at Southern Cross University, Lismore in Indigenous Studies. As an academic he has contributed to many publications, including ethnographic books on the North Coast Aboriginal peoples, and remains a frequently cited researcher.

Heron has contributed to extensive research at Macquarie University including on bush medicines, has been a contributing author on books on Yaegl bush resources in international scientific journals, has presented lectures and storytelling at Macquarie led National Science Week activities and has co-developed the long running and successful River of Learning celebrations at Maclean High School.

“As part of our initial consultations with Uncle Ron and the Yaegl and Bundjalung communities, they told us that we could help them run science and youth leadership activities. Now that the program has gone nationally, they’re even running their own part of it in the fabulous cultural immersion program.”

Despite advancing age, Heron’s drive has not diminished and in the last few years he has successfully studied for TAFE certification in Tourism and Guiding and has started taking tourists around the Clarence region.

** Vale Dr. Ruby Langford Ginibi 1934-2011 **

The valiant heart Ruby Langford Ginibi,
 proud Bunjalung woman,
elder, storyteller, author, historian and activist,

passed away 1st October 2011.

An icon of survival and strength for Aboriginal people.

She will be sadly missed.

Bronwyn Bancroft is one of five children's fiction authors short-listed for the 2011 Prime Minister's Literary Awards

Congratulations to author and artist Bronwyn Bancroft for making this impressive short-list for the 2011 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.

"This year there will be five short-listed authors for each category and the winner will receive $80,000 and the remaining short-listed authors will receive $5000 each."

Tenterfield-born Bronwyn is descendant of the Djanbun clan of the Bundjalung nation and details of her career and art can be found here.

Images from Dept. of Prime Minister and Cabinet Office of the Arts

Bundjalung clubs return

Grafton Regional Gallery's Jude McBean has a terrific piece in Saturday's Daily Examiner about the return of three Bundjalung clubs.

Credit: The Daily Examiner