Adapting to Change

Pressure on Aboriginal people was building with the arrival of the first cedar cutters around 1842 and then with pastoralists in the 1850s.

As Europeans moved in and set about clearing the ‘Big Scrub’ to open up new farmland, displaced Aboriginal people provided a labour source for the Europeans.

Aboriginal encampments often occurred on local properties where they worked guiding cedar cutters, clearing scrub for sugar cane farmers and road making, cutting and selling firewood or undertaking domestic duties.

“Well, that happened; because there was massacres here in Ballina, see, there was a lot of massacres at the time, they shot ‘em here, there, out at Coraki, poisoned them with flour, the south of Ballina and in Ballina. So they more or less moved out into the bush, you know, when the cedar cutters came and some of them used to work with the cedar getters ... they had a big scrub out there, the Big Scrub was [what] they used to call it then, and they worked there for farmers and different settlers there ...” Uncle Lewis Cook, 2005.

“They cut all the timber down first. There was a farmer over there at Boundary Creek ... Anderson, named Andersen and he asked the mill could they grown cane over there. “The mill agreed and they cut all the trees and burnt all the timber and they grew the cane in the middle through the stumps. They used to draw all that down to the bank with a slide and they used to have a pontoon down there and use to take it up to the mill.” Uncle Douglas Cook 1983.

Photos reproduced courtesy State Library of NSW from the album “Scrub clearing, vol 3 no 6 from the McIntosh and Campbell families photographs in northern NSW 1863-1908.” The image of Aboriginal people near Alstonville was taken around 1865 by Grafton photographer Conrad Wagner during a northern field trip. Reproduced courtesy State Library of NSW from the album “Girard family - photographs of Bandjalang [Bundjalung] people, Richmond River, N.S.W., c.1865”