In our new sustainability series, we talk to Byron hinterland locals doing great things for our planet.  

Hemp Collective, run by Mullumbimby locals Maxine and Mike Shea, produce hemp hair, body and pet care products.

Their business is growing and it’s all down to changing consumer preferences. As Maxine explains, there's an increasing awareness of the benefits of hemp as well as growing consumer support for sustainable products and business practices.  

It was when Maxine was diagnosed with a pituitary brain tumour nearly nine years ago, the couple stumbled across hemp. 

“It’s a non-cancerous tumour but it sits on my pituitary gland.  It was causing depression, severe headaches, fluid retention and terrible fatigue. I just knew something wasn’t right,” Maxine said. 

“Long story short, within three months I had brain surgery. Once the mass was out, I was a hundred times better, but unfortunately it grew back quickly. Mike started researching natural therapies and we kept coming across hemp. We thought, 'what an amazing plant, it actually has the potential to heal me' and it was from there our journey with hemp really started. 

“We’d been living in Mike’s home country of New Zealand and holidaying in Mullum and Bruns for years. We wanted some downtime so I could focus on my health and thought it would be great to live in Mullum - we’ve always found it a really healing place. The move all happened really quickly with a rental and my son getting into school straight away. 

“I’ve changed a lot of different things with lifestyle, stress levels and diet but I’ve had very marginal tumour growth during that time. It has definitely been a tool for my health journey. Ultimately, I know my own body and it has worked for me.

“We just fell in love with hemp and thought there was a real market opportunity for good quality products. Not just internally but also externally, so we started with hair and body care. I’ve come from an education, sustainability and zero waste background and wanted to thread that through the business,” she said. 

Hemp Collective doesn’t just say they have a commitment to sustainability. They offer very little plastic across their product range and can demonstrate a sustainable and transparent supply chain.  

“The only plastic we use is on our labels for our tins and droppers, but we are in the process of looking at ways to change that. The Pet Shampoo Bar is enclosed in a thick cardboard tube and the human shampoo and conditioners are sold in refillable tins,” Maxine said. 

“We’ve really thought about our ingredients, packaging and supply chains. It has been both time consuming and challenging. For example, with our conditioners, we thought we were palm oil free, but after checking with all our suppliers and going through all their ingredients a small component used to make the product contained palm oil. That’s when we ended up moving to a certified sustainable palm oil supplier,” she said. 

To understand why hemp is so misunderstood, you have to look at United States' history. Before the early 1900s, cannabis was available in pharmacies across the United States to treat a variety of medical ailments. But when a global opium crisis broke out in the early 1900s, governments around the world started to crack down on drugs and cannabis and indirectly hemp were caught up in it. There’s a great summary here. 

Basically, hemp just gets a bad wrap because of it’s cousin THC, but hemp contains very low levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), less than 0.3%.

Hemp is both versatile and eco-friendly. Hemp fibre is used in the production of paper, textiles, rope, sails, clothing, plastics, insulation, dry wall, fibre board and other construction materials. Hemp seed oil is used as a lubricant and base for paints and varnishes, as well as in cooking and beauty products. 

“With the hemp seed, we press it and get hemp seed oil as well as protein and flour for baking,” Maxine said. 

In the Hemp Collective's pet range, they've combined Australian hemp seed oil and chia seed oil together, which can help as a supplement adding magnesium, calcium and all the goodies that come in with the hemp seed oil Omegas into your pet's diet.

“We definitely need to be doing more hemp education and having mainstream products such as the shampoo bars made of hemp, we’ve had amazing results with general awareness. People are starting to realise it’s so nourishing and hydrating and it can be made into loads of different things,” said Maxine. 

“For the past half century, many people around this area tried to get hemp off the ground. We’ve seen locals who invested lots of money into hemp, but they were just too early to the market and failed. I feel like we’re starting to get over that hump now and there’s now much more openness to hemp products. 

“Awareness isn't hard in the Northern rivers. You have so many open minded people here who genuinely think differently and that’s why we’ve had such strong local support for our hemp products.

“Gen Z is definitely more aware of the impact of their purchases and want to support more purposed brands with sustainable ethics,” Maxine said. 

Check out the Hemp Collective range. 

Know of a sustainability superstar in the Byron hinterland? Let us know! 

The Hinterland Post checked out the rail line at Eltham with Member for Lismore, Thomas George

The Northern Rivers Rail Trail is set to become a reality for our region, evoking an emotional reaction from the local community. We hit the trail to hear from the locals who are for and against.

The grand plans for the Northern Rivers Rail Trail is to have a 132km walking and cycling track from Casino to Murwillimbah, via Byron Bay.

The federal and state government have just committed $6.5 million each to help fund the first stage of the rail trail, which includes transformation of the 24km of rail corridor from Murwillumbah to Crabbes Creek, near Mullumbimby.

The rail trail is expected to revitalise small communities along the route and boost the local tourism industry by encouraging visitors to stay longer and inject money into our local economy.

Figures for a completed rail trail show 88,000 visitors will use the trail each year and spend around $18 million in the region, providing 60 direct jobs and 300 indirect jobs.

The Northern Rivers Rail Trail Group started back in 2013 when locals, including Marie Lawton, came up with the idea and got the ball rolling.

“I’ve ridden rail trails in Victoria and New Zealand and realised how beneficial they were for the small communities they wind through,” Marie said.

Marie also argues that, in addition to all of the tourism and the obvious health benefits for the locals using the trail, it will also help to keep the rail corridor available for public use.

“We run the risk of losing the rail corridor if it’s not used,” Marie said. 

“We’ve run markets, given talks to community groups, written newsletters and media pieces, run petitions, held events and fundraisers which have all helped to get the project off the ground,” she said. 

From all of this profile raising, the funding eventually followed. In addition to the $13 million being tipped in from state and federal governments, $75 thousand was also raised from a crowd funding campaign to put towards a business case for the Casino to Eltham section of the trail.

Member for Lismore, Thomas George, said the project has been a result of a lot of hard work to get it where it is today.

“Originally the Northern Rivers Rail Trail Group were advocating for the whole line, from Casino through to Murwillumbah, to be developed,” he said.

“However, not all shire councils could agree on the plan. There was funding promised to look at it but because everyone along the line didn’t agree, it fell through.

“Then Tweed Shire Council, together with Northern Rivers Rail Trail group and the community, kept pushing for the Tweed Shire to be used as a pilot program.

“This hasn’t been driven by members of parliament, the rail trail has been driven by the community and Tweed Shire Council.

“As a result, their case has been recognised by the state and federal government and funding has been allocated to realise their plans,” Thomas said.

While the Northern Rivers Railway Action Group don’t have an issue with constructing the rail trail within the railway corridor, they have big issues with removing the railway tracks and replacing them with the trail.

Representative of the Group, Bill Fenelon said it’s possible to restore the train services one day, it just requires politicians with a bit of vision and thought for the future.

“The track, in its current condition, can already support lightweight rail vehicles,” Bill said.

“We’re advocating reopening the entire existing 132kms which will link all of these hinterland and coastal towns and villages.

“The remaining 32km to Tweed Heads should be completed and extended to Gold Coast Airport,” Bill said.

Bill also said suggestions that the rail trail will help protect the railway corridor were simply false.

“Section 99a of the Transport Administration Act has worked well to protect disused railway corridors all over the NSW.

“Under Rail Safe regulations, the railway corridor is required to be a minimum of 31 metres but at times it’s required to be over 40 metres around Byron and Mullumbimby where there are multiple tracks.

“With the train tracks being around 1.5 metres and the trail being around 3 metres, there’s ample room for the bike path to run alongside the track and section 99a would remain in force, protecting the corridor against any sell off.

“If Section 99a protection is removed so the trail can be built over the railway, developers could end up getting hold of the land, meaning the railway will never be restored," Bill said. 

Marie Lawton said the Rail Trail Group doesn’t think it would be possible for the trail to run beside the tracks.

“However it’s worthwhile getting the engineers tendering for the project to put the idea to rest one way or another,” she said.

“It might be possible from Byron to Mullumbimby but not from Byron to Bangalow. Through the Burringbar Range, there are tunnels, culverts, steep drop offs and bridges.

“We have to ask ourselves why we’d do that when it would be a lot cheaper and safer to construct the trail along the tracks. 

“If we thought there was a train coming back in the not-too-distant future, we wouldn’t be campaigning for a rail trail.

“It just wouldn’t be reasonable for any government to spend that much money on a train, for a low-population area, that not many people would use," Marie said. 

Thomas George said, “The government has made a decision there will be no train back on that track and I doubt whether any government would put a train back on there.”

“The government is funding a $2 million study for the light rail to come from Gold Coast down into Tweed Heads. If that proves successful, there’s nothing stopping the government and the community considering an extension of the light rail, which is common sense.

“However, it will go down the coast where the population is and that’s an opportunity that may happen in years to come,” Thomas said.

When local artist, Katka Adams and her husband Russell moved to Clunes in the 80s, they had no idea what to do with their 11 acres and little clue about their family connection to the region.   

“Russell’s grandfather, George Sharpe, had told us about time he’d spent in Bonalbo. He’d built a house from scratch and soon after Russell’s mum was born, they moved to Sydney,” Katka said.

“But it was only after we told George we’d bought in Clunes that we found out he was put on a train from Sydney to Eltham when he was a very young to become a farm hand at one of the new dairy’s.

“It was the early 1900s and when George’s father died young, his mum couldn’t make ends meet.

“He used to talk about how hard life was. He’d do the milking every morning barefoot because he had no shoes and he’d get frostbitten toes. When George was a bit older he got work clearing the Big Scrub.

“He called it “the scrub” like it was a menacing creature. It was something they had to get rid of so they could make way for the cows.

“He talked about clearing the land and using possum fur to keep warm. They would sew them into bedspreads and rugs to guard against the cold.

“George said they got so sick of eating eggs. Chickens were running wild and they’d lay wherever, so he’d come across these mountains of eggs in the bush,” she said.

In the 1840s, on the promise of ‘red gold’, men descended on the Big Scrub. Red cedar was in high demand for cabinetry and more than 185,000 acres between Lismore, Ballina and Byron was a virtual gold mine.

It took just a few decades for the largest area of subtropical lowland rainforest in eastern Australia to be demolished. Today, as little as 1 per cent of the Big Scrub remains.

The land clearing and the addition of exotic crops and weeds brought by the settlers, wreaked havoc on the environment.

In the early 1860s, to improve the situation and prevent squatters’ domination of the land, settlers were able to purchase freehold lots. The lots were £1 per acre, on a 25 per cent deposit with the balance to be paid within three years.

Landowners were required to live on their land and to make improvements which usually meant further clearing. Dairying became the major industry in the Northern Rivers.  

By the time Katka and Russell bought their patch of land, down the road from Eltham, it was a bunch of cleared paddocks previously used for a dairy.  

“We thought about what to do with the land for a year, Russell researched it and we decided to put the rainforest back. He’s actually planted around 2,000 Booyongs, Quandongs, Cedars and many other varieties,” Katka said.

Katka’s art studio looks over the regenerated land to the fields that Russell’s grandfather could have cleared all those years ago.

Weather Katka’s art series, It’s not common for hens to have pillows, was inspired by George’s chicken tales or her own chooks is unclear. However, it was a huge hit in the region with both the paintings and gift cards selling out in local shops and galleries.

One of the paintings in the series, A little nest is warmer than a big nest was selected for the Money Myth exhibition at the Toyota Community Spirit Gallery in Melbourne.  

“I think the series was popular in this region because it really spoke to our identity and culture.  

“We are down to earth, we love nature, animals and our community. We want the simplicity but beauty and quality is important to us as well,” she said.

Purchase Katka’s cards at the Clunes Store or through her website.