Byron Bay is built on sand and swamp. It always has been, and always will be, a changing place. Once buried under the slopes of Mt Warning, Cape Byron will one day be an island. We just have to live with that, and think long-term.

When the Norco building at Belongil was demolished the old chimneys became drainage pipes between the playing fields and Clark’s Beach. Sometimes big seas drive salt water back through the pipes into the swamp the fields are built on, and the salt kills the grass.

From the clock tower in Jonson Street there was once a two metre deep channel draining west, emptying into the swamp behind the new Service Station in Shirley Street, and eventually into Belongil Creek. Now there is a smaller underground pipe there, draining the middle of town.

Tallow Beach is named after the barrels of animal fat which washed ashore there when the schooner Volunteer wrecked on the Cape in a storm in 1864. The cargo was salvaged and taken on to Sydney by the schooner Wallaby, and could be Byron Bay’s first export.

Cavvanbah (Byron Bay's official name at the time) grew like a weed in the 1880s, with the announcement and eventual opening, in 1888, of a huge jetty, 400 metres long and wide enough for two rail lines, in front of what is now Main Beach car park. Building a jetty is thirsty work, so the Pier Hotel, our first major building, sprang up at the same time. Workers often camped at what is now First Sun Caravan Park, and was then grazing paddocks. Clarks Beach Caravan Park used to be a lot further from the surf. In the cyclone season of 1954 three huge sand dunes were washed away. Four cabins on the beach at Belongil were moved before the surf took them. Where there once was a problem in Byron Bay with sand blowing off dunes into the streets, the sand is gone, and the ocean is moving in.

We can expect a new shoreline with rising sea levels. Once the sand dunes along Belongil Beach are breeched the sea will roll in. That sandhill along Belongil Beach front acts as a breakwater protecting the town - a breakwater made of sand. Shirley Street already floods easily. Small changes in drainage could leave much of Byron Bay town a pond after storms.