History of the Brunswick Valley

The first human settlement of the Brunswick Valley occurred about 20,000 years ago.

At the end of the Pleistocene age, about 10,000 years ago, melting ice caps caused sea levels to rise, covering an eight kilometre wide strip of land off Cape Byron, leaving high relief terrain exposed as a coastal promontory. Coastal campsites used before the sea stabilised around 6,000 years ago, now lie beneath the ocean. Most archaeological sites on the NSW North Coast date to more recent times.

Early residents of the Valley enjoyed a comparatively settled lifestyle, all their needs being provided by the natural resources of the area. They lived in large, comfortable huts of tea tree bark laid over a frame of bent saplings. The first European settlers reported finding groups of these huts at the mouths of the larger rivers along the NSW North Coast.

There was also evidence of middens containing the remains of meals of shellfish, stone tools and human burials, but sadly many of these were later destroyed by sand mining.

The history of the Brunswick Valley is documented in the excellent book, Reflections on the Brunswick River - Its Health and History, by Peter Berney and Bronwen Eady, from which the following extracts are taken.

The Brunswick River was named by Captain Henry John Rous in 1828 while on a journey to survey the north coast of New South Wales. He named the river in honour of Queen Caroline of Brunswick, the German wife of King George IV of England. In his report of the journey (published in the Australian Quarterly Journal in 1829), he described the Brunswick as "another river to the north of the Richmond River. It possessed a narrow deep channel and rocky bar at the entrance and shallow north and south arms."

From 1849 cedar getters moved into the area and began to fell the highly prized Red Cedars. The cedar getters camped along the river and then worked their way deeper into the surrounding forest in search of suitable timber. Within 30 years the best timber resources became depleted and squatters moved into the area and began to clear the landscape for grazing. Around 1862, settlers began to arrive.

While agriculture was developing, timber was still the mainstay of the regional economy. Logs were floated down the river and loaded onto schooners outside the heads. From the 1880s onwards, greater numbers of settlers began to arrive and the catchment was progressively cleared for agriculture.

The rich soils and plentiful rainfall meant that farming operations were generally small compared to other parts of the Australian continent.With dairying becoming the major landuse, the existing forest was clear felled and was replaced with pasture species such as rye grass, paspalum and kikuyu. Bananas were an important agricultural product in the region from about 1910. This led to the clearing of many of the steeper slopes that form the boundary of the catchment. These land use activities caused substantial and rapid changes to an environment that had been gradually evolving over millions of years.

During the past 30 years changes in markets for produce, both nationally and internationally, have seen the traditional agricultural industries decline. Relatively new industries such as sugar cane and beef cattle production have taken their place. Many former dairy properties are no longer used for agricultural production and have been subdivided and sold as residential blocks.

Significant reafforestation has occurred in the catchment since the decline of the dairy industry, especially on the hill slopes. The return of the forest to the landscape has been through regeneration of the native species that originally grew in the area together with introduced species such as camphor laurel, which is now abundant in many parts of the catchment, and presenting another challenge for those working to restore the catchment's ecology.

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Photos courtesy Brunswick Valley Historical
Society. For more information: 6684 4867