Bangalow Heritage Museum. Photo Jeff ‘Scrubby’ Dawson
The Bangalow Historical Society is staging its latest exhibition, called Uncovering Our Past.
Event coordinator, Christobel Munson says, ‘While Byron Bay and Ocean Shores are known for their beaches, Brunswick Heads has its river life, and Mullumbimby has a funky rural vibe all its own, what Bangalow alone can offer the world is a portal to the Big Scrub’.
What is Big Scrub?
She says, ‘Before the earliest white people arrived in this area in the 1800s, 75,000ha of the Northern Rivers – including the area now known as Bangalow 2479 – was covered with dense rainforest. This became known to the early cedar-getters and settlers as the Big Brush, or Big Scrub’.
‘Uncovering Our Past reveals what life was like for those early white settlers, hacking their way through dense sub-tropical jungle, through massive ancient trees shrouded in prickly vines, coming across completely unfamiliar plants and animals in their search for a new home.
‘Our researchers have come across descriptions written by those settlers, such as government surveyors in the 1860s and children of early settlers, faced with a foreign and unexpected environment.
‘They have also gathered images of the rich diversity of plants and animals of the rainforest, then and now.’
The exhibition runs for another five weeks.
The museum is located at 4 Ashton St, Bangalow and is open Wednesday to Saturday, from 10am to 2pm.
Visit www.bangalowhistoricalsociety.org.au for more.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
