Land Ownership Change in Rural NSW: Northern transect Report

Abstract

The aim of this report is to provide stakeholders in the public, private and community sectors with key insights into patterns of rural land ownership in the Northern Transect based on analysis of land titles data from January 2004 to January 2020, supplemented by a series of focus group discussions and interviews with regional decision-makers in November 2020, January 2021, and July 2022. Three separate visits to the transect region were required because of delays and interruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Thirteen LGAs (Moree Plains, Gwydir, Inverell, Glen Innes Severn, Tenterfield, Kyogle, Clarence Valley, Coffs Harbour, Richmond Valley, Ballina, Lismore, Byron, and Tweed) representing a continuous 480km stretch from the coast to New South Wales’s northwest, were selected for analysis. These LGAs represent a large diversity of rural landscapes. Unlike the other regional reports in this series (Hunter, Riverina and the Central West), this report is therefore not framed around a discrete biophysical and social region. It goes without saying that Byron Bay is very different from Boomi (in Moree Plains). For this reason, parts of the text here discuss the transect not as a single region but divide it into ‘Coastal’, ‘Hinterland’, and ‘Inland’.