Byron Rainbow Farm is located in beautiful Brunswick Heads in Byron Bay Shire, NSW. We are a 27 hectare property with various farm activities including syntropic agro-forestry, bananas, dragon-fruit orchards, chicken and duck raising, native plantation and bush regeneration.
We currently have a focus on native rainforest regeneration and have recently planted 10,000 native rainforest trees over a large portion of the property. For the next year there will be a focus at times on maintaining these trees and suppressing weeds until these trees can form their own canopy and suppress weeds on their own.
We are 5 minutes by car from the beaches at Brunswick Heads or 5 minutes to the shops in Mullumbimby, or 15 minutes from Byron Bay itself.
We only expect you to volunteer on the farm 4.25 hours per day for five days per week (Monday to Friday) to a maximum of 21.25 hours. Work will be between 6.45am – 11:20am each weekday in summer or 7.45am – 12.20pm in winter with one 20 min break. We also expect you to spend an additional 1 – 2 hours each day keeping the volunteer accommodation area clean and tidy (the quicker you get this done the sooner you can have time for yourself). That means you will have every afternoon and all the weekends to spend getting to know the wonderful Byron Shire. In return you will be provided shared accommodation in the volunteer accommodation and will also be provided food for you to eat. You will have access to the accommodation buildings and the relaxation/activities building, shared shower, shared kitchen and shared toilet.
You will be volunteering with other volunteers as well as seasonal farm workers who will be supervising you each day.
We have around 15 adults and around 10 children that live and work on our farm along with our wonderful volunteers. Each morning you will work with different members of our farm community on different projects and jobs around the farm. All work and activities are overseen by our farm manager Dave. When doing farm work farm volunteers are supervised by our seasonal farm workers or farm manager at all times.
We have shared bikes for you to use if you do not have your own transport so you can ride into Brunswick Heads or Mullumbimby.
There are regular “Greyhound” buses to and from Brunswick Heads or Byron Bay ( https://www.greyhound.com.au ). There is also a regular “Byron Easy Bus” from Brisbane, Gold Coast or Ballina several times per day ( https://www.byronbayshuttle.com.au ). The “Greyhound” bus can drop you directly at Brunswick Heads and the “Byron Easy Bus” can drop you directly at “Uncle Toms”. If you are already in Byron Bay there is a regular scheduled bus service (645) run by Brunswick Valley coaches ( https://www.blanchs.com.au/wp-content/uploads/645.pdf ) that will drop you off at “Uncle Toms”. We are able to pick you up from “Uncle Toms” (which is the closest bus stop from us), Brunswick Heads or Mullumbimby on your arrival, but we are not able to pick you up from Byron Bay. If you are in Byron Bay, you need to catch the 645 bus from the bus interchange to “Uncle Toms”.
We are able to sponsor Wwoofers for their second or third year working holiday visa by working three months or six months on our farm as we are in a declared bushfire and flood disaster area.
We became a WWOOF host so we could share our beautiful farm with others and so our farm could be a base for volunteers to explore the beautiful Byron and Northern Rivers regions. We have around 10 regular farm workers on our farm and we wanted them to be able to share their skills and get more work done with the help of additional WWOOFers.
We did Wwoofing around Australia in our youth ; now we want to give the same opportunity to others.
Organic/Biological methods we use
We have a large syntropic agro-forestry area (one of the largest on the NSW North Coast).
Our farm is organic and we are still in transition to being fully certified.
We also try to practice permaculture and sustainability principles but they are not a dominant type of land management on the property. If you are looking for a functioning permaculture system then our farm is farm from the best example.
We also practice regenerative agriculture.
We are not vegan as we raise honey bees, chickens and ducks and also have several goats for weed control.
Many on our farm are vegetarian but we do not force our dietary views on other people.
