Urunga, New South Wales: Travel guide and things to do

Located 530 km north of Sydney at the mouth of the Bellinger and Kalang Rivers, Urunga is one of those secret places where people come to retire and where, because it is bypassed by the Pacific Highway, there is a charming olde world, untouched feeling. It is far removed from the commercialism which has characterised so much of the New South Wales North Coast.

Urunga (the town is reputedly an Aboriginal word meaning 'long white sands') has a population of 2000 of whom probably as many as 65 per cent are people who have moved to the area to retire. The attractions are obvious. The town is not well known. It is a pleasant, sleepy little place located between the Bellinger and Kalang rivers with some beautiful walks around the foreshores, plenty of fishing and sporting activities like golf and bowls and lots of sun and salt air. It is so easy to spend a couple of hours gazing out over the river from the lounge of the Golf and Sports Club, and there is no sense of urgency or overwhelming feeling of tourism. As one retiree said: 'It's a secret. Don't tell too many people about it.'

One of Urunga's advantages is that it is by passed by the Pacific Highway. To get to the town the visitor has to leave the Pacific Highway, cross the railway line, and wind down into a town which doesn't seem to have an obvious centre.

There's lots of evidence that in the 1950s it was a fibro town of holiday homes and fishermen's houses. Slowly those fibro dwellings have been turned into brick veneer project homes so that the town has a new, clean, rather well­heeled feel about it.

In spite of its consciously low profile, Urunga is the largest town in the Bellingen Shire.

Before European settlement the Urunga area was inhabited by the Kumbangerie (sometimes written 'Gumbaynggir) Aborigines who moved around an area which was bounded by Woolgoolga in the north, Dorrigo to the west and Nambucca Heads to the south. There is considerable evidence of massacres and maltreatment of the local Aborigines during the 19th century. The last known full blood, named Black Jimmy by the settlers, died at Bellingen in 1922.

In 1841 William Miles, a stockman from Kempsey, was the first European to enter the Bellinger Valley. He recognised the rich potential of the cedar which abounded in the area. The following year the Northumberland crossed the bar at the site of modern day Urunga. It heralded a 'tree rush' with cedar cutters moving into the area, cutting the trees and waiting for the floods to move the trunks down to the river mouth. The cutters were followed by farmers who, recognising the rich potential of the river valley's alluvial soils, grew maize and grazed dairy cattle.

By 1868 a pilot station had been built at Urunga (then known as Bellinger Heads) to help the sailing ships across the bar and up the river. The mouth to the river was always dangerous and inevitably it saw a number of dramatic shipwrecks including the Violet Doepel. By 1892 a breakwater had been constructed to help shipping but this was in vain as the improvement of rail and road meant that by 1933 the Pilot Station had been closed down.

Things to see