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 )
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