Cabbage Tree Island community dispersed during the February-March 2022 Northern Rivers flooding, remain in limbo twenty months later

Echo, 10 November 2023:

Member for Ballina Tamara Smith MP is today calling on the NSW Premier and the Aboriginal Affairs Minister David Harris to undertake an urgent and independent review of the NSW government’s decision not to allow the residents of Cabbage Tree Island to return to live on the island after the 2022 floods.

Cabbage Tree Island is a discrete Aboriginal community located on the Richmond River, between Broadwater and Wardell, part of the Bundjalung Nation. At the time of the 2022 floods there were 220 Aboriginal people living on the island. Their homes are rented from Jali Local Aboriginal Land Council, who own and manage the land on behalf of the Aboriginal community.

As Tamara Smith points out, since April 2022 the former Liberal National government, (and since March 2023 the current NSW Labor government) have claimed that they have consulted appropriately with the Cabbage Tree Island community, and that as Aboriginal people it would be the community of Cabbage Tree Island that would be determining their own future.

Promises

Former Premier Dominic Perrottet promised the community of Cabbage Tree Island that they could rebuild their homes on the island and go home. This was also promised by the CEO of Jali Land Council Chris Binge.

However, in a letter to Jali Land Council on 25 August 2023 the NSW Department of Planning and Environment removed the decision from Jali, by saying that the government would not financially support a rebuild on the island for residential purposes.

Last Tuesday, Tamara Smith attended with NSW Minister for Aboriginal Affairs David Harris and Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin a series of meetings with Cabbage Tree Island community members and other key Aboriginal organisations in the Ballina electorate.

She says it became patently clear that the people who are being dispossessed of their homes – the 24 families – have had almost no voice or agency in the process that saw the government intervene and deny them the option of returning home to the island.

Ms Smith told The Echo, ‘I heard directly from families on Tuesday and over the months since the decision that all but a few of the community want to return home to the island. They have been denied self determination and agency in their own lives and it is unacceptable....

Bridge to Cabbage Tree Island. Photo Tree Faerie.

‘I have seen the Water Technology report that the NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs commissioned at the behest of Jali Land Council to investigate options for the families to return to the island and there is a very clear pathway outlined for a return to the island.

‘Why then did the Labor government override Aboriginal self-determination and processes at the 11th hour?’ she asks.

‘I have had reported to me over the last 16 months repeated instances of failures in the consultation processes leading to the decision including only junior bureaucrats representing agencies and ministries throughout the process despite the seriousness of the situation, and the devastating trauma and impact of any decision on the Cabbage Tree Island community,’ said Tamara Smith.

Shameful

‘Why has the Labor government lied to the community and put traumatised people though a long process of so-called consultation only to dictate their fate in the end?

‘It is shameful and a review of the whole process over the last 17 months must be undertaken immediately before it is too late, and to allow for the voices of the residents and community who lived on the island to have their voices heard by government,’ concluded the Ballina MP.....

Read the full article at:

https://www.echo.net.au/2023/11/mp-tamara-smith-calls-for-halt-on-cabbage-tree-island-dispossession/

BACKGROUND

NORTH COAST VOICES:

MONDAY, 4 APRIL 2022

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

https://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com/2022/04/cabbage-tree-island-2-april-post.html

MONDAY, 23 OCTOBER 2023

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

https://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com/2023/10/nineteen-long-months-after-record.html

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