The Bundjalung and Cavvanbah
Byron Bay and the country around it lie on the traditional lands of the Bundjalung Nation, among them the Arakwal, Minjungbal and Widjabul people, who have lived along this coast for at least 22,000 years. The region's traditional custodians believe that Nguthungulli made the land and the people, and that he rests at the place now called Julian Rocks.
Wajung and Kabul are significant totems for the area. In the Minjungbal language the township area is Cavvanbah, a name that means "meeting place". European settlers arrived in the area in the 1830s, and a massacre in the 1850s took place south of Suffolk Park, near the site of today's quarry.
Lieutenant James Cook found safe anchorage in 1770. He named the cape after a fellow sailor, Vice Admiral John Byron. Byron was known as 'Foul-Weather Jack' and had sailed around the world, and his grandson was the poet Lord Byron. Cedar logging, cutting the Australian red cedar, was the first industry in Byron.
Local names such as Possum Shoot, Coopers Shoot and Skinners Shoot recall the timber trade, where logs were "shot" down the hills and dragged to the ships waiting below. After World War I timber getting became insignificant, and many former timber workers turned to farming. Gold was found at Byron Bay in 1870, and up to 20 mining leases on Tallow Beach worked the black sands for gold around the 1870s.
Jetty, railway and the dairy years
The town's industries have been primary ones: dairy, abattoirs, fishing, and whaling that ran until 1963. Byron Bay was also a sea port, significant but hazardous. The poet Brunton Stephens wrote a poem in 1876 about cattle grazing on Cape Byron's "mossy plains". The first jetty came in 1886, and the railway reached the town in 1894, the same year Cavvanbah became Byron Bay.
Dairy farmers settled the area, clearing more land as they did. In 1895 the Norco Co-operative was set up to provide cold storage and to handle dairy and meat processing, and the arrival of paspalum grass improved production. Butter from Byron Bay was sent around the world from depots at Murwillumbah and Lismore.
Cape Byron Lighthouse dates from 1901, and stands at the most easterly point of the Australian mainland. Building it destroyed a ceremonial ground significant to Arakwal men. The first meatworks opened in 1930, and the meat and dairy works gave off an appalling smell. Each year in the 1950s and 1960s, migrating whales were slaughtered as well. Sand mining between the World Wars, for monazite (zircon, uranium and thorium), damaged the environment further. Mining stopped in 1968 and processing in 1972.
Surfers, the agreement and after
Longboard surfers came in the 1960s, riding the waves at Cosy Corner, Wategos and The Pass. Travellers began arriving, and the town's name as a place they came to took hold. By 1973, the year the Aquarius Festival was held at nearby Nimbin, the town had a name as a hippy, happy, alternative place, though tourism facilities were still minimal. Tourism grew in earnest from the 1980s.
In 1994 three Arakwal Elders made a native title claim. After seven years of negotiation, the claimants and the State of New South Wales reached an Indigenous Land Use Agreement in 2001. It was a national first, and a precedent for later agreements around Australia. Two further local agreements followed.
Byron Bay still draws surfers, backpackers and tourists to its natural attractions. Artists, craftspersons and musicians live in the town, and something of its newer hippy and new age past shows in the alternative "new-age" shops, "spiritual" offerings such as yoga and meditation, and "wellness" retreats built around holistic healing.