Tweed Heads - A History

Twenty million years ago the Tweed and surrounding areas area was a massive shield volcano stretching from Byron Bay to Nerang and over 150km's out to sea. Over millions of years the volcano became dormant and rain washed away the lava, leaving a large volcanic plug, "Mt. Warning" and a caldera, the surrounding mountains, the McPherson and Nightcap Ranges and draining the new valley a river, which became know today as 'The Tweed'. Later the valley and its mountains were covered in lush, dense, sub tropical rain forests.

For many thousands of years local Aboriginal people lived in the Tweed and Byron areas. They were the Nganduwal dialect tribal group and they were hunter-gatherers. Given the climate of the area and the abundence of food the local tribes flourished and were some of the healthiest in the land.

In 1770, Captain Cook in HMS Endeavour, sailed his way up the eastern coast of Australia noted the reefs east of Cook Island and hove off the coast. The following morning he saw the sun on the mountain which he named Mt. Warning. The Aboriginal name for the mountain was Wollumbin or Rainmaker - and isn't there plenty of that.

In 1823, John Oxley in the ship the"Mermaid", went on a voyage from Sydney in search of a place for convict secondary punishment. On his journey he discovered a vital river which he named the Tweed after the river in the UK.

A number of years later, Captain Rous in the frigate "Rainbow", journeyed in a ship's whale boat up the mighty Tweed River. In the process he recaptured nine convict escapees from the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement - amazing feet in itself. Later a military outpost was set up on Point Danger to recapture run-aways. After a year the soldiers withdrew because of the hostilities with the local aborigines tribes caused by their infringement of tribal customs.

In 1844 the men arrived searching for high quality timber with which to build the houses of Sydney and set up their camp near deep water at "Taranora" (aboriginal for "little river") on Dry Dock Rd, South Tweed Heads. Schooners carried the logs south. Unfortunately many of them were wrecked on the river bar, which remained shallow and full of shoals until the retaining walls were built in the 1890's when the channel in its turn started to continuously silt up. This problem has remained to this day and if you are in the area you can actually see the dredging happening to negate this silting.

The Tweed was gradually opened up to a carfefully selected number of farmers from 1866 to 1914. The first settlers tried many crops corn, arrowroot & opium, but finally settled on sugar in the late 1870's as their staple crop - which is still the case. The sugar crop generated the need for sugar mills and much labour. Small mills at Bilambil, Tumbulgum & Cudgen were gradually replaced by two large ones the C.S.R. mill at Condong and the Robb Mill at Cudgen. These mills can still be seen.

The latter was one of the few 'plantation' mills in Australia staffed largely by South Sea Island labour. It did not survive the introduction of the White Australia Policy. The Condong Mill is still the economic mainstay of the Valley.

The descendants of the Islanders remained in the Valley for many years as a major component of the sugar gangs.

The towns of the Valley grew slowly. Tweed Heads began to develop from 1870 onwards after a pilot station was opened there, and later the villages of Murwillumbah, Tumbulgum, Chinderah, Tyalgum & Uki became service centres. The railway reached Murwillumbah from Lismore in 1894 and the rail arrived at Tweed Heads from Brisbane in 1903. They were linked by river ferries until the 1930's.

The primary sector diversified into dairying, banana growing and fishing at the beginning of the 1900's and became major exporters of produce.

But, since W.W.II tourism has emerged as a major industry which together with a large influx of retirees from southern Australia has made the Tweed Shire one of the fastest growing areas in Australia and by all accounts will remain so for quite some time.