This precinct is Byron Bay’s most historic part, for it was here that the town’s first public buildings were erected.  The construction of the jetty in 1886-88 stimulated other developments nearby.  For instance, on the corner of Bay and Fletcher Street David Jarman, the town’s first resident, built the twenty-two room Pier Hotel in 1888.  In the years that followed other buildings went up – a blacksmith, stores and butchers shop.  Another hotel, the Great Northern, opened its doors in 1892, but this was farther south, opposite the site of the town’s railway station.  The Great Northern was burnt down in 1897, was rebuilt in 1899, and then in 1936 once again it was destroyed by fire.  The current hotel is the third of that name.

In 1892, a public meeting was convened for the purpose of forming a School of Arts and a building was erected directly opposite the railway station in 1905; a more permanent structure replaced it in 1907.  This building was to become the heart and soul of the town.  There, public meetings were held, a library was established, dances, balls and concerts were held; even church services were held there.  The School of Arts changed its name to the Literary Institute in 1913 in order to attract a government subsidy made available to institutions of that nature.  Amongst the uses of this building was a meeting place for the Norco Dairy Co-op’s annual meetings.  It was also used for dramatic productions, and as a cinema into the 1920’s.

Today, this central precinct throbs with life and activity, particularly when some of the Bay's festivals are held.  That the small village scale of the Bay can still be discerned aids the strong sense of community.  Now a range of boutique and fashion shops, first-class accommodation and restaurants have their own place within this community.

This precinct is mostly within the original surveyed village at Byron Bay, and includes the lots which were the subject of the first sale of government land in July 1886.  The precinct therefore includes many of the oldest and most historic lots in Byron Bay, in streets named after writers such as Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and Thomas Carlyle. Early town planners of Byron Bay mistakenly believed that Lieutenant James Cook had named Cape Byron after the poet Lord Byron, rather than after the poet’s grandfather, Admiral John Byron.  This led to the naming of the town’s streets after British literary figures who were greatly admired in the nineteenth-century.

In this area some of the town’s first major services were established:  Byron Bay Public School in 1892, St Paul’s Church of England in 1898, and St Finbarr’s Roman Catholic primary school in 1916.  Here also the first sports fields were marked out of the village reserve.  At the turn of the 20^th century, Byron Bay had cricket, rugby, and tennis clubs.  Following the Great War, men’s and women’s hockey teams were established, and in 1923 the Bowls Club was formed.  In 1922 the Governor General Lord Forster officially opened the recreation grounds and the War Memorial which contained the names of service personnel.

This precinct also contained Byron Bay’s major industry, the Norco dairy factory.  Norco, which became the largest dairy co-operative in the southern hemisphere, was established in Byron Bay in 1895.  It wasn’t long before it took over all the other dairy co-operatives in this northern area of the State.  After the closure of the Byron Bay dairy factory in 1972, the building became the Returned Services Club, opened in 1974.

This precinct, partly within the original surveyed village at Byron Bay, includes some of the town’s most historic parts.  Notably, it includes the railway station, opened in 1894 which, together with the earlier jetty, provided the economic arteries for the town.  In the twenty years following the construction of the jetty, Byron Bay became a major seaport.  It never reached the high expectations held for it, because it was not protected from easterly and northerly blows.  Ultimately, that weakness led to its demise.  Yet, in its time, fast ocean-going vessels made twice-weekly runs to Sydney, carrying agricultural cargo, timber and passengers.  One of these vessels, the Wollongbar, a 2000-ton steel steamer built at Glasgow in 1911, was reputed to be the fastest ship in Australia.  It was wrecked at Byron Bay in 1921, and part of its wreck can still be seen in the water today.

The demise of the Wollongbar added weight to calls for the construction of a new jetty at a safer location.  In 1929 the second Byron Bay jetty was opened at a site about one kilometre north of the first, towards the mouth of Belongil Creek.  In 1954, the second jetty was virtually demolished by a cyclone which swept away not only much of the jetty itself, but twenty-two fishing boats which had been lifted to the deck of the jetty for safety.  Away with the jetty went Byron’s future as a seaport.  The beach end of the jetty, which had survived the cyclone in 1954, was used by the whaling industry which operated briefly in Byron Bay from 1954 until 1962 – its grisly spectacle drawing crowds of on-lookers.

When Lieutenant James Cook sailed the Endeavour northward past what is now far northern New South Wales in 1770, he gave the name Cape Byron to a ‘tolerable high point of land’ that he observed on 15 May.  In doing so he honoured Commodore John Byron, who was famous, among other things, for his circumnavigation of the globe in Dolphin several years earlier.  Today Cape Byron is known worldwide, and tourists flock here in huge numbers for its scenic views.

Cape Byron was long excluded from the town and suburban lands of Byron Bay, partly because of an official desire to preserve its timber from the settler’s indiscriminate axe.  It was the nearest source of timber for construction in the new settlement.  The Cape remains largely undeveloped, but its northern slopes above Watego’s Beach were subdivided and sold in the 1960’s.  This area has become Byron Bay’s most exclusive residential address.

The headland is also home to the famous Cape Byron lighthouse.  Opened in 1901, it was one of the many such shipping guides forming a sequence along the east coast.  It is built of concrete blocks with a balustrade of trachyte stone, cut to size and dressed at the quarry in Bowral.  Once operated by a resident light-keeper and powered by kerosene, the station now runs automatically and is connected to mains electricity.

In addition to those who visit Cape Byron for the views, people gather in huge numbers during the winter months to watch the migration of the humpback whales northward to their breeding grounds in places like Hervey Bay in Queensland.  Cape Byron is also a mecca for surfers and board riders who come in their thousands to the north-facing Clarkes and Watego’s Beaches.

Surrounding the surveyed village of Byron Bay when it was laid out in the 1880’s was a larger area of ‘suburban lands’, extending southward to Tallow Creek and westward almost to Belongil Creek.  Much of the suburban land was divided into the holdings of around 10 – 20 acres each in area.  An exception to this generalisation was near the south-eastern corner of the village, where it was entered by the road from Bangalow and Broken Head.  Here, where the land was higher and drier than most of the suburban lands, the government surveyor laid out a cluster of smaller blocks, mostly 1 – 2 acres each, probably Byron Bay’s first rural-residential subdivision.  Well-known local families such as Glasgow, Cousins, McLean and Kirkland are among the first owners of these blocks which constitute the north-western corner of the Ironbark/Comet precinct.

The Big Scrub – the seemingly impenetrable rainforest that once stretched from Byron Bay to Lismore – was the most distinctive natural feature of the district.  Early travelers moved along the beaches, where the difficulties of the headlands were more manageable than the dense brush with its dampness, darkness and silence.  After decades of clearing for farmland, very little remains to remind us of the former landscape.  Of all the precincts of Byron Bay this one gives us the closest indication of the former vegetation coverage.  The tall trees in this area, with their coastal rainforest elements, act as a natural visual and sound barrier, creating a refuge for bird and animal life away from the hustle and bustle of the town and the arterial roads which skirt the area.  The serene setting provides an appropriate location for the town’s historic cemetery.

Suffolk Park fronts Tallow Beach, the name of which records a significant event in the history of the area.  In 1864 a ship carrying a cargo of more than 100 casks of tallow was wrecked near Cape Byron, and many of the casks washed onto the nearby beaches.  Tallow Beach derives its name from this tragedy in which the crew of five lost their lives.

The village of Suffolk Park takes its name from the Suffolk family from whose land it was subdivided.  The design of the beachside estate was prepared by surveyor Frank Wearne in 1922, although the place was slow to develop.  Suffolk Park was not gazetted as a geographical place name until 1970.  The street names of the Suffolk Park Estate subdivision commemorate many local identities: Wareham Street (after the brothers Fred and Owen Wareham, early selectors in the Parish of Byron), Jarman Street (David Jarman, early Byron Bay businessman and president of Byron Shire), McLean (possibly George McLean, early director of Norco), Clifford (William Clifford, a Norco general manager), MacGregor (John MacGregor, chairman of Norco), Armstrong (James Armstrong, chairman of the provisional board of Norco in 1892), and Alcorn (Andrew Alcorn, early director of Norco).

The flat, sandy coastal plain south of Byron Bay was less favoured for farming than the rainforest-covered red-soil country father west.  Consequently, it was not taken up for nearly twenty years after the first selectors moved into the higher land behind Cooper’s Shoot.  Most of the land now comprising the Baywood Chase and Byron Hills estates was taken up in 1896 by the Wooldridge and Hamilton families. It remained mostly as farmland until the late 1980’s when the present residential subdivisions began to be developed.

The cliffs which form the western backdrop for this precinct have an important place in the history of the Byron Bay district.  Unable to snig their logs down this steep escarpment, the early timber getters cleared a path - or shoot – down which the logs were slid or rolled to the coastal plain.  From there the bullocks would later snig them to Tallow Beach or Byron Bay for loading through the surf onto ships.  One of the best-known shoots – Cooper’s Shoot – was immediately behind this precinct.  It is appropriate that many of the streets here have the names of rainforest trees, including the hoop pine, which became the main timber shipped from the local beaches after the cedar gave out.

Set back safely from the beach and separated from it by Belongil Creek, this precinct retains many of the natural features of the coastal heathland on which it is situated.  The familiar gnarled appearance of the Coast Banksia evokes the visit of HMS Endeavour to adjacent waters in 1770; Joseph Banks, the ship’s botanist, gave his name to this peculiarly Australian genus of plants.  It was across the nearby sweeping beach that Lieut. Cook first saw the distinctive peak of Mount Warning and its associated ranges.  The natural beauty of this area has now made its impact on many generations of people.  From its earliest days Byron Bay was a holiday centre for inland towns such as Lismore and Casino. It continues that tradition today, as a tourist holiday centre but now with a world reputation.  The draw card, as ever, is the long expanse of golden beaches.

Closely associated with Ewingsdale is the name of Flick, one of the Byron Bay district’s early settler families.  William Flick and his wife Sarah came in the late 1880’s to the area that later became known as Ewingsdale.  William Flick brought the first school to Ewingsdale, drawn by his bullocks through the scrub from McLeod’s Shoot.  It re-opened on its new site in 1895 as Tyagarah School, and was renamed Ewingsdale Public School in 1909.  Ewingsdale School, and subsequently the locality, was named after Thomas Thomson Ewing, who provided the land on which the school was established.    At first a ‘peppercorn’ rental was paid for the school site, but in 1909 the Department of Public Instruction acquired the freehold from Ewing.  The capable Ewing was closely associated with the Richmond River district for many years, first as a Department of Lands surveyor, and later as a politician.  He became a licensed surveyor with the New South Wales Department of Lands in 1877, and from then until his resignation in 1885 he did much surveying work in this district.  He stood successfully for the Legislative Assembly in 1885 and held the seat of Richmond from then until 1894 and the newly-created seat of Lismore from 1894 until 1901.  Ewing moved into Federal politics in 1901.  He held the seat of Richmond in the House of Representatives until ill health forced his retirement in 1910.

William Flick and his wife Sarah reflected the tenacity and commitment of pioneer farmers of the era.  Not only were they instrumental in establishing the school, but they also agitated and worked for the establishment of a church, St Columba’s Anglican Church was built a short distance to the north of the Ewingsdale school on a block of land presented for the purpose by Sir Thomas (as he was by then) Ewing.  The church was opened in 1915.

The rapid growth of coastal towns in the last three decades has been accompanied by a rediscovery of rural villages.  Just as smaller communities once declined because of improvements in transport, improvements in modern communication have now brought an erasure of distance, enabling new settlers to pursue a rural lifestyle, with its laid-back pace, spaced housing, and traditional country living, while keeping the benefits of town life within easy reach of the amenities, shopping, recreations, corporate living, and neon-lit nightlife.

The town of Bangalow is mostly situated on land first selected by Robert Campbell in 1881.  The locality was initially known as Byron Creek, and this was the title adopted for its first school in 1884.  The opening of the railway line from Lismore to Byron Bay and beyond in 1894 gave great impetus to development at Byron Creek, and it was around a railway station that the village began to grow.  Although the railway station had been called Granuaille, the village took the name Bangalow, the name that had earlier been bestowed upon the local post office.  The station was renamed Bangalow shortly after it opened, but the local school did not follow suit until 1907.

By the beginning of the twentieth-century the village of Bangalow had grown to have a store, post office, sawmill, hotel and school.  Only one decade later, it had four stores, a bootmaker, solicitor, doctor, dentist and numerous tradesmen such as blacksmith, tinsmith, carpenters and carriers.  By the outbreak of the First World War, Bangalow was well established as a growing country town – with two banks, its own newspaper – The Bangalow Herald, and churches of the usual denominations.

Bangalow was in the heart of the dairy industry – sustaining many small-scale farms.  These went into decline, however, as the rural recession of the 1960’s saw dairy farmers leaving the land in great numbers.  For a time, the land which had formerly been covered by the Big Scrub and later by dairy pasture risked becoming infested with lantana and tobacco bush.  This was halted by the arrival of new dwellers seeking the rural atmosphere.  These new settlers brought with them new ideas, a new drive, and a commitment to enhancing the lifestyle of the village.  Bangalow has undergone a resurrection and today is once again a vibrant and progressive town.

The earliest settlers in the Byron Bay district, the cedar getters, cut their big logs in the Big Scrub and hauled them to the edge of the coastal escarpment by means of the bullock team.  At certain spots where the slope was not too great, the giant logs were then slid or rolled over the edge to the coastal lands below.  From there they were ‘snigged’ by the bullocks to the beach, and thence dragged through the surf and loaded into ships.

These spots on the escarpment became known as ‘shoots’, each usually bearing the name of the cedar-getter who established his base camp at that spot.  Once such cedar getter was Joseph Cooper who gave his name to Cooper’s Shoot.  Other shoots in the Byron Bay district were McLeod’s Shoot, Skinner’s Shoot, and Possum Shoot.  These shoots epitomised the struggle of these early timber men to establish industry in the depth of the primeval forest.

It was not until the dairying industry began to be established, however, that settlement of the Byron Bay district took place in something resembling an organised fashion.  Soon the need for the rudiments of civilisation brought about the establishment of stores, post offices, schools, churches, and hotels to serve the growing community of farmers.  For instance, the first school near the old timber camp of Cooper’s Shoot opened in 1904 when dairying was in full swing.

Indeed, most of the communities in the Byron Bay hinterland owe their existence to the clearing of the Big Scrub for dairy farms, and the progress of the settlement of the Big Scrub lands west of the bay can be gauged by the establishment of schools.  Public schools were established at Coorabell in 1891, Opossum Creek (as it was originally known) in 1899, Myocum in 1903, and Tyagarah in 1911.  Tyagarah originally encompassed the area that we now know as Ewingsdale, and an earlier Tyagarah school opened in 1895 was renamed Ewingsdale in 1909.

The coming of the railway was another impetus for settlement.  When the line opened from Lismore to Byron Bay and beyond in 1894, Granuaille (later Bangalow) was the last station before Byron Bay.  The intensification of farming activity between these two places, as well as the continuing needs of the timber industry, led to the opening of additional stations at Talofa (in 1895) and St Helena (in 1898).

Byron Bay’s first industry was cedar-getting and when the cedar supply was exhausted the timber men turned to harvesting the hoop pine, and the splendid hardwood forests.  Along the beaches, miners extracted gold and much later rutile and zircon from seams of black sand.  In the hinterland of the Bay, farmers grew sugar cane, and grazed cattle, first for dairy products and later for beef.  In the 1950s whaling was added to the Bay’s diverse range of industries.  The town of Byron Bay was the home to major processing plants for dairy and beef products, and for mineral sands, but all of these had gone by the early 1980’s.  As these earlier primary and secondary industries faded from view, tertiary industries associated with tourism, entertainment, film-making, surfing, music-making and education found a ready market with the young and with the cultured followers of these occupations.  So, side-by-side with old crafts, these new industries have found a place in the industrial estate precinct.