New Years Eve

It’s the biggest night of the year in one of Australia’s party hotspots - yet the invitation says no alcohol and no fireworks.

Instead, the entertainment for New Year’s Eve festivities in the NSW resort town of Byron Bay will include children’s rides and jumping castles, street stalls, a community parade and a variety of music including rock, reggae and Polynesian. This year the town, a top destination with both domestic tourists and overseas backpackers, is reverting to a low-key, family and community orientated New Year’s Eve. Alcohol will again be prohibited in parks and reserves adjoining the town centre, following NSW government approval. And, police have been given special powers to crack down on anti-social behaviour.

The December 31 party, which has the theme Peace and Environment, is part of an “action plan” by Byron Shire Mayor Jan Barham to get Byron Bay back to its roots. Over the past few years, as the area has completed the transformation from hippie to trendy, it has been inundated with overseas travellers.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the Byron Shire, now home to events such as the Splendour In The Grass music festival, has a population of 30,724. Approximately 1.7 million tourists visit the area every year. These tourists have injected millions of dollars into the local community and brought other benefits.

But some long-time local residents argue tourism has grown to the region’s detriment. A local who has lived in Byron Bay for the past 30 years and who works at one of the town’s backpackers hostels said tourism was his “bread and butter” and the council’s New Year’s Eve move was negative - and odd. “I think they’re (the council) going to find a lot of people downtown with nothing to do,” said the 34-year-old, who did not wish to be named or have his work named. “Restlessness (also) happened in the early 1990s. A lot of people got fired up.”

Cr Barham, Byron Bay’s first Greens mayor, has lived in Byron Bay for the past 15 years and has been mayor for two. She says the council was not trying to push tourists away, but many locals were scared to go out because of crowds - hence the 2005 family oriented New Year’s festivities.

“The lifeblood of Byron’s tourism for many years was families and so we’re really just trying to get that message out there and attract those people back to Byron,” Cr Barham said. “What I want to maintain is a vibrant and sustainable tourism industry. “What’s unsustainable is the tag of being just a party town.”

She said the opening of the Chinderah to Yelgun motorway, cutting the driving time to Byron Bay from the Gold Coast and Brisbane, had made the town more accessible and people wanted to visit because of the “great beaches, shops and restaurants”. Cr Barham said tourism has resulted in many “positive spin-offs” - everything from extra coffee shops to kayaking and skydiving - that catered to tourists but also provided for the locals. It was only when backpackers had a negative impact on residential areas that problems arose, she said.

The main problem was holiday letting, and the council was working to address that. “Tourism’s spreading to the residential zone, people are coming and partying without management,” Cr Barham said.

She said another factor hurting the town was the number of “daytrippers” - those who came to the town for the day simply “for a good time”. That had been made easier because of the highway upgrade, she said, but the council could do nothing about it.

“We don’t have any real control over the daytripper factor,” Cr Barham noted. Chairperson of the Backpacker Tourism Advisory Panel, Julian Ledger, said he had seen no evidence visitors caused problems in Byron Bay or in Australia’s other tourist destinations, such as Sydney’s beaches.

He said the negative tag often attached to backpackers was unfair. “It’s (the trouble) just as likely to be young people from the local community,” Mr Ledger said.

Residents also had to have reasonable expectations, he said. “People who buy homes in places that are close to environments that are popular with young people have to have reasonable expectations with respect to residential amenities,” Mr Ledger said.

He said Waverley Council in eastern Sydney had this year again allowed a backpackers function at Bondi Pavilion on Christmas Day, which was “well organised and quite well attended”. “It seemed to me that the beach was for everyone and people were having a great time without having to take alcohol onto the beach,” Mr Ledger said.

AAP

Posted: Monday, January 9th, 2006 Under: News. | Home |

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