Byron Bay

Byron Bay is the most easterly point in Australia. It is a true counter-culture town with a strong resonance from the heady hippie days of the seventies, still visibly thriving. Long hair, dread locks, rainbow-colored clothing and hippy values are part of life in Byron Bay, as are more serious interests — peace marches, environmental consciousness, frequent arts and literature festivals, respect for the land and for the indigenous people of Australia, and a welcoming appreciation of the many different cultures that are now part of Australian life.
Judith Shelley settled in Byron Bay after 10 years in Indonesia, where she developed a deep respect and love for that country’s cultural richness, and where she was a practicing artist. At [...]

A BADLY decomposed body has been found by a group of abseilers at the base of a waterfall on the New South Wales north coast. Police and the Volunteers Rescue Association worked for more than eight hours yesterday to recover the body from Mount Jerusalem National Park, near Byron Bay. The body was discovered by three abseilers at the base of a 50m waterfall early Wednesday, police said.
The body was transported to Newcastle morgue, where a post-mortem examination is being carried out to determine the cause of death. The identity of the body is not yet known and missing persons reports are being checked as part of the police investigation. The victim’s gender is unknown.

Barham to push for car ban on NYE
Only vehicles carrying Byron Shire residents’ stickers will be allowed to bring their cars into Byron Bay on New Year’s Eve, if Byron Mayor, Cr Jan Barham has her way. Cr Barham said she didn’t want a repeat of last year when visitors were able to pay a fee to bring their cars - and alcohol into the town. The ban on cars coming into the town would go hand in hand with the prohibition of alcohol in the CBD given the go-ahead last week by Byron Council. Under the prohibition order, alcohol will be banned in the CBD for 18 hours between noon on December 31 until 6 am on [...]

PETE Murray is an Australian music phenomenon.
At 35, he’s a relative newcomer in an industry where careers can be snuffed out not long after puberty. Not only that, he’s a sensitive singer-songwriter who has turned the pop world on its head by selling close to a half-million copies of his major-label debut album, Feeler, since its release two years ago. It’s one of those rare and heartwarming success stories, made all the more so by the fact that he is a genuinely down-to-earth bloke, a former rugby player, who has become a father for the first time during his rise to the top.
Now, however, comes the moment that will truly test his mettle. The follow-up to Murray’s first [...]

Maturity and contentment have mellowed the former wild man of Australian rock, Emma Miller discovers.
IT’S A full two days since the Beasts of Bourbon played Melbourne’s Hi Fi Bar, and Tex Perkins, clean-shaven and dressed in a black suit jacket, is doing his best to look bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. But it ain’t easy. “I found the gig extremely taxing,” he admits. “I haven’t done that sort of thing for a while, ‘cos I’m getting old. Drinking lots of alcohol and screaming your guts out isn’t as easy as it was when I was 20.” “Straight after the gig I can’t really speak for a couple of hours; I’m completely depleted, both emotionally and physically.”
It’s not quite what you’d expect to [...]

Local authorities urged to solve affordable housing shortage…
Developers and social and economic leaders have joined forces to try to address a shortage of affordable housing in far northern New South Wales. Developer Adam Bennett-Smith says local authorities must come up with a solution fast or risk the State Government taking control of the issue. He says if that happens there will be no local input into how developments take shape.
“The State Government may take that responsibility away and replace it with what they call a State Environment Planning Policy which means that affordable housing becomes a state-run planning issue,” he said. “You sort of lose any kind of edge to produce a specific sort of solution to a local problem [...]

Twelve vintage planes are being prepared for a 10,000-kilometre journey across outback Australia to raise money for the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
The Great Circle Air Safari will begin in Sydney next month and make 28 stops including Byron Bay, Toowoomba, Longreach, Mt Isa, Alice Springs, Uluru, Coober Pedy and Broken Hill. Organiser Chris Fletcher says vintage planes including a Tiger Moth, Chipmunk and Beaver will take part.
“When we started doing this, it was really to re-enact that the flying doctors used to fly aircraft of this ilk to actually pick up people and help people in remote Australia, and the fact that they did it in those aircraft and it’s such a challenge flying them, especially at 1,000 feet and [...]

After a hefty stint in the US of A, honorary Australian John Butler is returning for a long awaited tour around the country.
This year Butler has done the Big Day Out tour nationally, as well as the tsunami benefit gig Wave Aid at Sydney’s SCG and flying all the way back to Australia for the Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival in April this year.
Since his absence his multi-platinum album ‘Sunrise Over Sea’ has been released in over 20 territories and he has performed on stages in America, Japan, France, the UK, Germany and Switzerland, and even managed to sell out San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore Theatre as a headline act.
The tour kicks off in Adelaide in December and tours [...]

Battle for Byron: A LONG battle over tourism in Byron Bay is now pitting property investors against the local council. Some residents have sought legal advice after they were sent a letter by Bryon Bay Council which said that they could face a $1.1 million fine if they continued to holiday let their investment properties.
Also, preliminary legal advice for the homeowners had suggested that not only the council but also its councillors could be liable for holiday investors’ financial losses if it was successfully sued for handing out negligent information. In its letters the council had said that under the 1988 Local Environment plan, holiday letting was a “tourist facility” that was prohibited in residential zones. Residents were also [...]

Sculptures Land at Thursday Plantation
The countdown is on to the 10th Anniversary Thursday Plantation East Coast Sculpture Show, opening on Saturday, 17 September. For the next two weeks, the Thursday Plantation sculpture park at TP Health’s headquarters, just north of Ballina on the Pacific Highway, will be alive with activity as scores of artworks are installed throughout the park’s rainforest groves.
Among the first to land, from Canberra, was Geoffrey Farquhar Still’s steel replica of a paper aeroplane. Don King, of WHK Rutherfords, the show’s lead sponsor, was there to lend a hand alongside TP Health’s founder Christopher Dean. Entitled “Joy Flight, Forced Landing”, Farquhar Still’s piece is suspended up a tree to imply that life’s journey can be [...]