The Byron Bay File — 2…
Byron Bay backroads
THEY STAND, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched against the unexpected change of weather as the farmer explains how he grows and harvests the crop. He seems impervious to the cold wind gusting in from the south.
Surrounded by the stiff, strap leaves of Russian garlic that cover the exposed slope, I look out to the rolling countryside, a patchwork of bush and farmland that undulates towards a ridge to the west. Above, the grey sky. In fine weather it must be beautiful up here.
Russian garlic is a low-growing plant, grey-green in colour and in sufficient demand to make it a worthwhile cash crop. Like the common garlic it is the underground part, the bulb or corm, that is eaten although the corm of Russian garlic is larger. The plant covers the slope between the top of the knoll and the house and is one of a number of crops that Maria and Peter grow. In other seasons they plant chilli and stevia, a sweet herb used as a sugar substitute.
“The market for Stevia is small but it is growing”, Peter tells us. “We dry it before selling it. It is being used in more and more products. We sell all we grow. The chilli goes to the herbal products market”.
This windy knoll is not a comfortable environment to discuss the growing and marketing of herbal products on a day of strong southerlies. Now, rain starts to fall. The wind picks it up and slings it against skin protected only by summer clothing. The group wastes no time in returning to the shelter of the verandah. I have never been so cold here in the subtropical hills behind Byron Bay.
Maria and Peter’s small property straddles the upper slope of a hill that protrudes above the escarpment. This is open, exposed country in bad weather but in summer it can be just as hot and humid as anywhere on the North Coast.
Like Maria and Peter’s speech, the compact, salmon-orange coloured earth-built house betrays a Germanic influence. Inside, winter sunlight streams through second storey windows to warm the interior. Downstairs, the living area and kitchen take advantage of the house’s northerly aspect for light and warmth. A wide, roofed patio provides shade and shelter from summer’s heat. The house is homely and comfortable with a pleasant, lived-in ambience. The couple built it when they moved onto their land after deciding that the rolling country of the Byron Bay hinterland would be their home.
“This is where we store and do initial processing on our crops”, Peter explains, ushering the group into a long, utilitarian building that occupies a cutting in the slope below the house. “Some crops are processed elsewhere in the area before going to herbal processors for use in their products. There are other growers in the region but not too many producing stevia. It is a new product”.
Maria and Peter are a quiet couple who appear content with their life here in their little house on the hill with their specialist herb farming business. Theirs’ is the simplicity of choice, not poverty.
Rural re-settlement brings changes
I drive into Bangalow and recall how much I like this town. Why, I don’t know. I have never lived here. It is something about the scale of the town, how it retains its early Twentieth Century architecture, how the one-street town centre, lined with shops, ascends the hill to the disused railway station at the top.
Like other settlements in the area Bangalow was once a farming town. I suppose it still is but it is clear from the businesses lining the man road that tourism is now its main industry. Cafes and craft shops are the signifiers of economic and social change here, as they are in other North Coast towns.
Bangalow is a waypoint between the landlocked city of Lismore and the towns that line the coastline — Byron Bay, Mullumbimby, Lennox Head and Ballina. It is the sort of place where in the 1960s holidaying families might have stopped for a hamburger and then moved on, down to the coast. Now, the old timber buildings of the main street have been renovated, their former selves re-created but with different goods in the shops than they originally offered. The town has become a destination in its own right, transformed by newcomers who moved in over the past three decades. Bangalow has regular monthly craft and farmer’s markets, a sure sign of success in this region.
The changes these newcomers brought should not be underestimated. They started to arrive in the region in the 1970s, mainly younger people in search of a better way of life free of the hyper lifestyles of the metropolitan cities. They brought change, both social and, with the passage of time, economic change as over the years they infused moribund farming communities with new ideas, new attitudes, new lifestyles and, eventually, new businesses. And still they come, though those arriving today are more likely to be middle-aged and in search of life change, or retired folk in search of somewhere friendly and warm to settle. Some, perhaps, lived here temporarily at the start of the rural re-settlement of the 1970s and are now returning to live here permanently. Others are those who wished they had come then but did not. Now they have, their presence adding to the change that has reshaped the region and pushed up the price of real estate. Expensive real estate. That is the story here on the North Coast.
The lifestyle sought by the early coterie of re-settlers was a one of voluntary simplicity. Many came from middle class families in the cities, however they eschewed the trappings of materialism. That was the idea, anyway. They were a restless cohort in search of something vague even to themselves. Many moved on, their restlessness unsatisfied, but others stayed. Over the span of years they grew older, made friends and found jobs. They acquired partners and families and settled into the folds of this undulating landscape, buying old farmhouses or moving into the towns. From the Nimbin valley in the west to the tourist town of Byron Bay in the east and south to Ballina, thirty years of re-settlement have brought social and economic transformation.
Home in the hills — Peta’s garden
Peta is a quietly spoken woman in her early forties perhaps, short blonde hair, oval, wire rimmed glasses and a ready smile. A community-minded woman, she was once a volunteer with the Seed Savers Network down on the coast. She and her husband were part of that exodus from the city that transformed the region, she explains after we arrive at her house not far from town.
The weatherboard house sits on a gentle slope. Like other older dwellings hereabouts it is raised off the ground, leaving a shady living area below that offers respite during the hot, humid summers. Being early summer, it is here we sit around a table.
“When we moved in this was cleared land once used to graze beef or dairy cattle. But unlike others who moved to the region we didn’t simply allow the bush to regenerate. We transformed it to produce a variety of fruit trees and bush foods. You can see over on the eastern side of the house the large vegetable garden we made to supply us with much of our food.”
I look over to see a geometric arrangement of raised garden beds made of concrete blocks. With its renovated house, its fruit trees and gardens there is a settled domesticity about the place and the lives lived here. Like Peter and Maria with their hilltop farm, Peta and husband have made a home for themselves amid the farms and forests of this well-watered hinterland. They seem comfortable in that way that people who know they have found their place in the world often are.
Option no more?
I know that the number of young people who want to live the type of life pioneered by the re-settlers of the Byron hinterland in the 1970s is now fewer, however the region continues to attract newcomers. This is in part due to the ‘downshifting’ identified by social researcher, Clive Hamilton, of the Australia Institute.
Downshifting is the practice of exchanging higher-paying and higher-status city jobs and lifestyles for a less-stressful existence in the country or on the coast. The trend was popularised by ABC television’s comedy-drama, Seachange, a series that may have accelerated the trend simply by bringing the possibility to peoples’ attention. As this is largely a phenomenon of the over-40 year age group, what of young people, those of the age group that pioneered the coastal lifestyle more than 40 years ago?
I was speaking about this with a friend as we sat in the shade of her verandah one hot summer afternoon and looked out over a grassy field to the forest beyond and to a distant mountain range in the far distance. As I waited for her to bring glasses of cold water I thought that this, the farms, fields, forest and mountians is why people toss it in in the cities and move here.
My friend has lived in the region for a little over 25 years and has an extensive social network of friends and acquaintences, so she has an insight into why people move up here and the problems they encounter. She places the glasses on the table and sits opposite.
“Times are different,” she answers. “Young people today start their life with a substantial debt accrued in getting a university education. While it might not stop them leaving the cities, there are the social and economic pressures pushing them into a career. Earning power is a value that was far-less prominent 30 years ago and I think it comes from, partly anyway, a sense of insecurity about contemporary life. Except for an all-too-brief year spent traveling after completing high school or university, the opportunity for living an open-ended life today often fails to eventuate.”
“So, it’s the way society and the economy have changed since the immigration into the regon of the 1970s?”, I respond.
“Yes. It’s harder now. Social and economic pressures are greater. Some of those people of that first immigration wave into this region treated unemployment benefits as a government subsidy, in the way that farmers and businesses sometimes get a subsidy. They might have disliked the government but they were tied to Canberra by an economic unbilical cord.
“But those benefits, they’re now harder to get. Still, young people do make the change. In the courses I teach I find that they are more the dissatisfied, the searchers. Once, back then, people felt part of a social movement and that gave them a sort of cohesion with others and a confidence that is lacking today. It stemmed from that sense support and mutual assistance you get when you share a life-changing experience with others. Now it is more an individual thing, making the move from the city to the uncertainties of life up here.”
My friend was not reliant on unemployment benefits when she moved up here from the city. She set about developing a livelihood in adult education, however that is not an opportunity that is widely available. Unemployment is common in the region. People will often take any job they can find and with little else on offer they will stay at it.
As I drove away I looked over at my friend’s block to see the modest home she lives in with its large vegetable garden backed by a grove of fruit and nut trees, the bush beyond and the big pond where ducks left V-shaped wakes as they paddled across the water. Looking out, I understood why people quit the city and take the highway north.
On the high ridges
“Just step over it”.
We hesitate when we see what we have been told to step over — a black snake so long it straddles the width of the path. The black snake, familiar to Australians who venture into the bush, is a venomous species but it is not aggressive unless provoked. A shiny black animal, it can reach two metres in length.
“It’s a resident in the garden. I’ve got used to seeing it about”, Tania says, as if that will make it any easier for the hesitant visitors who are relieved to watch the serpent slither into the undergrowth.
Finding Tania’s place was a bit of a challenge. Only very general directions had been provided, the following of which had led to the unintended discovery of some of the hilly hinterland’s narrow and winding back roads.
The view from her property is extensive. Ridges cut across the landscape to the north, their sides a grey-green smudge of eucalyptus and rainforest. This is corrugated hill country formed by the forces of geology and time and nature’s persistence in covering everything with a layer of green vegetation. Their home, a renovated weatherboard farm house situated at the end of the ridge where it spills to the valley below, occupies a superb position from where the land around lay revealed.
Tania and her partner have been here only a couple years. Her husband is fortunate enough to have the skills to work from home and her intention is to teach the permaculture design course here. Before they moved from the Central Coast an hour north of Sydney, Tania taught at their rural smallholding.
Tania’s is an extroverted and light, easy-going personality that overlays a quiet energy. Sharp and at the same time welcoming and down-to-earth, Tania’s lack of affectation is reinforced by her stature and her long, straight, dark hair that falls loosely over her back and her slim, almost thin body gives the impression of robust, outdoor health. Tania moves gracefully through her garden as if she belongs on this remote hilltop.
Having negotiated the black snake, we emerge into an extensive vegetable and herb garden, a free-form arrangement of curved edges and unusual shapes that extends along the ridge. Just below, the ridge topples into the steep, forested valley.
Two WOOFERS — the acronym stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms — an agency that places people on organic farms where they work in return for accommodation and food — are in the garden. The blonde-haired and bearded young man is in his mid-twenties and of English origin; his German co-worker, blue-eyed and blonde, hair twisted into a long tail, is around the same age. They are spending time on Tania’s property, they explain, and do not know where they will go for their next WOOFing assignment. They, at least, have found the means to an open-ended life.
Farmlet on the urban edge
It is a different world on the coastal strip. Gone are the ridges and narrow backroads of the hinterland and the encroaching forest, all replaced by the throb and pulse of Byron Bay, premier holiday town of the North Coast and home to surfers, seachangers, alternative lifestyle folk, New Age aficionados, big city refugees, opportunists and an ever-changing population of foreign backpackers.
The town’s population of 9000 triples during the summer holiday season but even then Byron Bay retains its languid, subtropical pace, and even then there are pockets of quietness to be found.
One lies off Old Bangalow Road where it winds its way up the escarpment. The property sits on an east facing slope, its situation ensuring it captures the morning sun. We drive in and park. Adjacent to the entrance the land rises steeply and has been planted to a variety of trees. It is what has been done under the trees that is of interest.
We walk over. Close inspection reveals a slope cut across by long ditches. When it rains and runoff moves down the slope and is detained in these ditches from where it feeds the trees that have been planted along their edges. Upon realising that many are fruit trees, it becomes apparent that this is a cultivated system. Known as contour ditches because they have been excavated along the contour of the land so that water does not drain away but instead soaks into the soil, the owners of the property refer to them as swales. The clay soil below the trees is shaded from the subtropical sun and is muddy and slippery. We watch our step, but not closely enough as someone takes a long, slow slide.
Above the slope and past a row of banana trees is an enclosure holding a dozen or so chickens, mainly the large, black Australorp variety. Spices are grown in a terraced garden above.
“We grow chilli and other spices for restaurants in town”, explains the owner, a woman of middle age who moved from the city with her husband some years ago. “There are a variety of herbs and vegetables, and pawpaw trees and bananas for fruit.
“This is not the main vegetable garden”, she says, gesturing towards a large, two-level white house with a roof reminescent of a Chinese pagoda. “The main garden is over there, down by the trees at the bottom of the slope.”
As we stand at the terraced garden of spices, herbs and vegetables they have built on the slope above the banana trees, I realise that these are people who have negotiated the compromise between farm and suburb to live a semi-rural life on the edge of town. Doing that is the goal of many who move up here. Some, like this couple, achieve it. Others do not.
A future in change
The North Coast, the region between Nimbin in the west and Byron Bay in the east, between Ballina in the south and Mullumbimby in the north has been changed by the influx of new settlers over the decades following the 1970s. That influx continues to some degree although many moving into the district are in middle age and older and, in the towns, are bringing unanticipated challenges as the newcomers put more and increasing pressure on infrastructure and push real estate prices higher and higher.
Most of the urban development has been below the escarpment where Maria and Peter’s grow their Russian garlic. It follows the coast, leaving the hinterland to farm and bushland. The steep ridges visible from Tania’s house remain free of urban development and, I hope, will stay that way.
I am off south now that my visit has ended. Through Lennox Head I go and after a stop on the headland to look at Cape Byron jutting seawards on the northern horizon and to watch the long lines of swells at Lennox’s point break, I pass through Ballina and into the flatland of the sugar cane country. It is a different vibe here away from the beaches, a farmland vibe, the feel of a place where people have different priorities to those I visited. As I settle into the long drive ahead I start to give serious thought to the conversation my partner and I have been having. If we really do want to move up here to live, the sooner the better.
The Byron Bay files…
In PacificEdge…
