The peak that dominates every view from Murwillumbah is sacred. To the Bundjalung people, Wollumbin means 'cloud catcher', and the summit is a place of ceremony and initiation, a declared Aboriginal Place under the National Parks and Wildlife Act. Out of respect for that significance, the traditional owners ask that visitors do not climb it. The mountain holds a quiet geographic distinction too: standing where it does, roughly fourteen kilometres west-southwest of the town, it is the first point on the Australian continent to be touched by the rising sun. To watch dawn break over the caldera, with cloud snagged on the old volcanic core, is to understand exactly how the mountain earned its name.

On 22 November 1978, Murwillumbah became the scene of the largest bank robbery in Australian history. A crew known as the Magnetic Drill Gang broke through the rear of the Bank of New South Wales, and using a diamond-tipped electromagnetic drill and a surgeon's cystoscope to see inside, worked for hours to penetrate the vault. They escaped with just over 1.7 million Australian dollars in cash, then jammed the safe shut behind them. The crime was not even discovered until a security guard noticed an open door the next morning, and it took bank staff, police, and finally council workers nine hours to crack the safe and confirm it was empty. Nearly half a century later, the money has never been recovered and the case remains unsolved.

Fire and flood have repeatedly forced Murwillumbah to rebuild, and the rebuilding gave it character. After a blaze destroyed most of the business district in 1907, the town rose again, and much of its handsome streetscape carries the clean lines of the 1920s and 1930s. The river that gives the town life also threatens it: protected by levees that cannot hold back the worst of it, Murwillumbah has flooded again and again, with the 2022 deluge the highest on record. Yet the town has reinvented itself as an arts and lifestyle hub in the lush Tweed hinterland, surrounded by alternative retreats, a Hare Krishna community, and the green caldera's tropical farms. The annual Tweed Banana Festival, among the oldest festivals in Australia, has run here for decades.

For a town of fewer than ten thousand, Murwillumbah has launched a remarkable number of lives. The surfer Stephanie Gilmore was born here in 1988 and went on to win eight World Surf League titles, the most in the history of women's professional surfing, and the only surfer ever to take a world title in a debut season. Bob Bellear, born in the Tweed region, became the first Aboriginal Australian appointed as a judge. Eric Willis, the 34th Premier of New South Wales, came from here too, as did a long roster of rugby league and union internationals. The valley has drawn filmmakers as well: the town has doubled as a movie location, and the nearby jungle has hosted the British reality series I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!