Mullumbimby

Mullumbimby is a town in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia in Byron Shire. It promotes itself as The Biggest Little Town in Australia. The town lies at the foot of Mount Chincogan in the Brunswick Valley about 9 kilometres (5.5 miles) by road from the coast. At the 2011 census, Mullumbimby and the surrounding area had a population of 3,172 people. Locals refer to the town as "Mullum".

Origins and Name

Originally occupied by the Bundjalung people, by the 1850s Europeans had established a camp site at the junction of two arms of the Brunswick River. This grew to become a village and later the township of Mullumbimby. Mullumbimby was originally a centre for the timber industry. Notably, red cedar was collected in great quantities from around the area, a part of the far northern New South Wales' "Big Scrub".

The town was a logical site for settlement by the timber hunters, as the Brunswick River is tidal in the town and navigable to that point, allowing logs to be floated down the river to its mouth at Brunswick Heads. The town's central location gave access to most of the catchment area, and it provided the best position for bullock teams to cross the river with their wagons loaded with timber. At low tide it is still possible to see the shallow region where the bullocks made the crossing of the Brunswick River, under the current "Federation Bridge" on Murwillumbah Road.

Mullumbimby (novel)

Mullumbimby (2013) is a novel by Australian author Melissa Lucashenko. It won the Fiction category of the Queensland Literary Awards in 2013.

Plot summary

Jo Breen mows the lawns at a cemetery for white settlers in the small town of Mullumbimby, inland from the north coast of New South Wales. She works to buy herself a block of land and to care for herself and her teenage daughter. Breen is a Goorie, an Indigenous woman from the local area, and her relationship to the land she owns is deep-felt and defining.

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