Bellingen

Bellingen is a small town in the Mid North Coast of New South Wales, Australia.

Bellingen is a small town in the Mid North Coast of New South Wales, Australia. It is located on Waterfall Way on the Bellinger River, approximately halfway between the major Australian cities of Sydney and Brisbane. In 2016, the population of Bellingen was 3,074, and it is the council seat of Bellingen Shire.

The Bellinger Valley was first settled by Kooris – the Gumbaynggir people. The first European to come across the Bellinger Valley was the stockman William Myles who arrived in 1840 looking for new valleys north of Kempsey and the Macleay River. The following year, Myles returned accompanied by government surveyor Clement Hodgkinson. Hodgkinson decided to name the area after the word that the Gumbaynggir people in the area used for the river, "Billingen", pronounced like "Billing-en". When it came time to write the word, the Aboriginal voice and the European ear combined to give the spelling of "Bellingen", and over time usage has altered the pronunciation to the current "Bell-in-jen".

At some point, a draughtsman who was compiling the Colony map from original documents misread Hodgkinson's final handwritten "n" as an "r"; meaning that the Bellingen River officially became, and is still the "Bellinger", while the town retained the name of "Bellingen".Hodgkinson had spoken up about how the area contained a great deal of fine cedar and rosewood, and by 1842 there were cedar cutters at the mouth of the Bellinger River and sheep grazing in the valley. In July 1843 the first cargo of red cedar from the Bellinger Valley was transported to Sydney.The growth of cedar cutting throughout the 1840s was dramatic, with 20 pit sawers operating along the river by 1843. By 1849, the first timber vessel, the 'Minerva', being built by a shipwright named William Darbyshire. So rich was the area in cedar that it was estimated that over 2 million feet of cedar were being extracted each year.The Bellinger Valley was progressively settled throughout the 1850s. In 1864, a site was set apart and reserved for the village of Bellingen. In 1869, the Police Station and Court House were built in Bellingen, and the town allotments were surveyed in 1869 and were sold by public auction at West Kempsey Court House on 14 September 1870.By the early 1900s, red cedar supplies in the Bellinger Valley were virtually depleted. The cleared areas were turned into prime farming land and the valley became a dairying centre. The indigenous population had been decimated by disease and inability to move across the land to locate traditional food supplies, and many were killed in their bid to drive away the cedar getters and new settlers from traditional Gumbaynggir land. 'Black Jimmy' was reported to be the last full-blood member of the Bellinger Gumbaynggir People. Black Jimmy died in 1922 and is buried in Bellingen Cemetery. The Gumbaynggir People still live in the area of Bellingen.

The dairy industry crashed in the 1960s with the rise of the European Common Market, when export prices fell (with Britain no longer relying on Australian dairy products) and the margarine industry finally overcame laws restricting its production levels. Dairy farming still continues to a lesser extent.

Rainforest logging ceased altogether in 1975. Sclerophyll forest logging is still carried out, but to a much lesser extent than in the past.

Owing to high rainfall and its proximity to the valleys of the Bellinger and Kalang rivers, Bellingen is known for its frequent flooding. Tallowood Point near Bellingen often has the State's highest annual rainfall.