Ballina

Ballina is a town in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia, and the seat of the Ballina Shire local government area.

Ballina is a town in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia, and the seat of the Ballina Shire local government area. Ballina's urban population at June 2018 was 26,381. The town lies on the Richmond River and serves as a gateway to Byron Bay.

Ballina is located on the ancestral land of the Bundjalung people, the original inhabitants. Archaeological evidence demonstrates Bundjalung occupation of the region for at least 6000 years. One view suggests that the name Ballina comes from corruption of a clan name for the Bullina band of the Arakwal. It has been argued that in this tribe's Bundjalung language, bullinah meant "place of many oysters". This theory argues that the Aboriginal name reminded the predominantly Irish settlers of "Ballina", so the name's origin could be an accidental or deliberate corruption. Another view is that towns's name comes from the Irish placename Ballina (Béal an Átha, "mouth of the ford"), which is found in several parts of Ireland.Ballina was established in the 1840s on the northern shore of the Richmond River, 20 kilometres south of Cape Byron, Australia's most easterly point. HMS Rainbow, commanded by Capt. Henry Rous, first sailed into the Richmond River in 1828, followed by overland settlers from the Clarence River. In 1842, more settlers arrived on a ship called Sally, forming a settlement at what is now East Ballina on Shaws Bay. A lighthouse, Richmond River Light, was first constructed in Ballina in 1866, which served as a significant port in the region. The temporary lighthouse was replaced with the current one, designed by James Barnet, in 1879, and first lit in 1880. It is still active. A branch railway line connected Ballina with the Murwillumbah railway line railway at Booyong. The line was opened on 24 August 1930 and closed on 12 January 1949.

Ballina has a number of famous "landfalls" associated with it. In 1928, Charles Kingsford Smith's plane, the Southern Cross, crossed the coast over Ballina after its epic journey across the Pacific Ocean. Ballina had a festival associated with the event during the 1970s and 1980s, and a school in East Ballina bears the name "Southern Cross".

In 1973, the Las Balsas rafts were towed into Ballina by fishing trawlers after their journey from Ecuador. One of the rafts is preserved in the Ballina Naval and Maritime Museum. They had planned to arrive in Mooloolaba in Queensland, but currents forced them off their course. Their journey was almost twice as long as the Kon-Tiki expeditions of 1947 and proved that people could have travelled across the Pacific in ancient times.

The town of Ballina experiences a humid subtropical climate (Koppen Cfa), typical of the central part of Australia's eastern coast. Summers are sultry, humid and rainy, with approximately 40% of the town's total annual precipitation occurring from December to March, with March being the wettest month of the year, receiving an average of 215.6 mm (8.488 in) of precipitation. Ballina's annual precipitation total observes a considerably higher concentration in the first half of the year (January–June) than the second half of the year (July–December). Ballina's wetness is due to the town's coastal location and proximity to Cape Byron, the easternmost point in Australia, which means that exposure to moisture-laden frontal systems that develop throughout the year in the Tasman Sea follows accordingly. Ballina experiences a copious 1,817.9 mm (71.6 in) of precipitation annually, which is one of the highest annual precipitation levels to be found along the eastern coast of Australia south of the tropical coast of northern Queensland. The all-time highest and lowest temperatures ever recorded in the town are 42 °C (107.6 °F) and -2.0 °C (28.4 °F) on 12 January 2002 and 17 June 1999 respectively.