Woolgoolga is a pleasant and leisurely seaside town which spreads from the hills down to the beach side. Woolgoolga is famous for its large Indian community, its Sikh temples and its Indian restaurants. The traveller, noting the Guru Nanak Sikh Temple on one side of the road and the large Indian complex a few hundred metres further north, would be forgiven for thinking they were not in the New South Wales northern rivers district but in part of the Punjab.
Before European settlement the Woolgoolga area was inhabited by the Gumbaingirr Aborigines. It was the northern extremity of a territorial area which was bounded by Dorrigo to the west and Nambucca Heads to the south. There is some evidence that the town's name was derived from the original run owned by Thomas Small which was called Weelgoolga. No one knows exactly what this word means but it is believed it was used by the local Aborigines as a term to describe both the entire area and the lily-pilly trees which grew in the area.
