History

This country is Widjabal Bundjalung. For tens of thousands of years before any of what is now called Billen — before the cattle, before the settlers, before the strata — Widjabal Bundjalung people lived on these slopes, and on the country surrounding them. They are still here now.

Two possible meanings of Billen have been given by local Aboriginal people: flat top mountain, and the place where the parrot landed.

The land itself is older than any of this. Mt Warning, around which Billen sits, is the eroded core of an ancient shield volcano. The caldera ring around it is one of the largest in the southern hemisphere — the rim runs north through the Northern Rivers in a great curve, and Billen is on its western edge. The basalt soils that volcanic activity left behind are part of why this country, before clearing, supported wet sclerophyll forest with rainforest understory in the gullies. Both still exist in fragments. Border Ranges and Nightcap National Parks preserve some of the largest. Billen's reafforestation zones are slowly bringing back what was cleared.

[A short paragraph from a Widjabal Bundjalung source — perhaps drawing on existing material from the Bundjalung community, or a reference to where readers can learn more — would deepen this section. The website should not write extensively about Aboriginal history of this country without proper sources.]

The first wave of clearing was for cedar. Red cedar — Toona ciliata — was the great prize of nineteenth-century extraction in the Northern Rivers, drawing cedar getters up the river valleys from the 1830s onwards. They took the giants out of the gullies and the easier slopes first. What they left behind, harder country and lesser timber, gradually became cattle country once the cedar was gone. By the time grazing began at Billen, the rainforest cedar pockets had already been pulled out.

Then came the cattle. The settlers are not named on any plaque here, and no village monument records what was lost — but the bare paddocks of 1982 are themselves a record of what cedar getting, cattle, and clearing did over a hundred years.

What stood here before the clearing: wet sclerophyll forest of brushbox, tallowwood, blue gum, with rainforest pockets in the gullies and on the southern slopes. The clearing took most of it. Some patches survived in the steepest gullies and the hardest-to-reach corners. These are the seed banks that the regrowth has been working from for forty years.

By the late twentieth century, the land had been worked hard, the topsoil had thinned, and the cattle era was ending. The paddocks were tired. The country was waiting for something else.

In 1982, Billen Cliffs Pty Ltd was formed. The founding documents named three intentions: rural lifestyles, affordable innovative housing, and land regeneration. The cleared paddocks were bought.

None of those intentions were small. Affordable rural property in northern New South Wales was already, by 1982, a hard thing to find. Innovative housing meant owner-built, off-grid, experimental — not the project-home aesthetic. And land regeneration meant taking responsibility for the damage cattle and clearing had done, and trying to undo some of it.

[A founding member's voice belongs here. Someone who was at the early meetings, or close to them — describing what the country looked like when they arrived, what the original group thought they were building, what surprised them, what was harder than expected. A few paragraphs in their own words would carry more weight than any reconstruction.]

The first lots were taken up. The first dwellings went up — owner-built, idiosyncratic, varied. The roads were cut and named: Khyber Pass, North West Passage, Ring Road, Dam Hill, Sheathers Hill, Hidden Valley Fire Trail, Victor's Hill. The first dams were dug. The land began to come back.

In 1990, Billen Cliffs became a strata title scheme. Strata Plan 36965 was registered. The legal form of the village changed from a private company — Billen Cliffs Pty Ltd — to an Owners Corporation, governed under what was then the strata legislation of the day, and is now the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act 2015.

What did that mean in practice? The 115 individually-titled lots, two acres each, became the personal property of their owners — sellable, transferable, with title deeds. The 200 acres of hamlet common areas, the 20 acres set aside for shared commercial use, the 300 acres of reafforestation and conservation, the roads and dams and water infrastructure — all became common property, held collectively by the Owners Corporation and maintained collectively under levies.

This was not a small change. It moved Billen from an experimental private venture into a legal entity that would outlast the original group.

[Founding member's voice: was the strata transition smooth? Was there debate about whether to do it? How did it change the way the village made decisions?]

The shared buildings went up around 1996 — fourteen years after the founding, six years after strata title. The Community Hall, the Social Space at the Coffee Club, and the Arts & Crafts Centre were built — substantial spaces on the central common area. The Machinery Shed, the Fire Shed, and other utility structures followed in stages.

By this point most of the lots had been taken up, and a hundred or so dwellings had been owner-built. The variety is part of the character — there is no Billen architectural style. Some are timber pole-frames. Some are mudbrick. Some are conventional. Some are hardly conventional at all. Each carries the signature of who built it.

The road network was completed and named. The fire trails were maintained. The fire breaks at the perimeter went in — this is bushfire country, and always has been. The Bush Bus Stop went in at the entrance, where it still is.

[Founding member's voice: someone who was there for the building of the Community Hall, the Social Space, or the Arts & Crafts Centre could write a paragraph about what those buildings meant to put up — the work, the funding, the design decisions, the moment they were finished.]

The cleared paddocks are no longer cleared. The 300 acres of reafforestation have become recognisable forest — patchy, weed-choked in places, but forest. The dwellings have multiplied and aged. The original founders are mostly older now or gone; their children grew up here; some have stayed.

The work is not finished. The Community Hall is thirty years old and shows it. So are the Social Space and the Arts & Crafts Centre. The dams need clearing. The roads need maintenance. The bush needs ongoing attention. The bylaws need review. Some of what was conceived in 1982 has been achieved. Some hasn't. Some has been achieved and is now ageing back into needing attention again.

What's emerging next: a working visit programme that brings outside hands to the maintenance work. A generation of younger residents finding ways to live here. The slow, ongoing project of bringing this land back to something closer to what it was before the clearing.

This is where the village is now.