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• A WEALTH OF EUROPEAN HISTORY

The Ballina Shire has a wealth of Historical European and settler sites to explore.

Cedar getting families were among the first Europeans to settle on the Richmond River at Ballina in 1842. Within a few years, Ballina had become a small centre known as Richmond Heads that serviced smaller cedar settlements along the tributaries of the river. As the number of camps in the area grew, more settlers came including storekeepers and shipwrights, teachers, clergy and farmers.

Timber was also an important industry through the closing decades of the nineteenth century. With the ready availability of timber, weatherboard houses became a characteristic of the rural and urban landscape. Some good examples of timber housing remain in the shire today.

If you are looking for information about your family tree, visit the Richmond Tweed Family History Society's research room in Las Balsa Plaza, Ballina. It contains books, journals and CDs of local, national and overseas data.