Byron Bay Tourist Information
JOHN GUDGEON wants to eradicate Byron Bay’s ‘tourist hating’ image before it spirals out of control. The business coach has watched his home town evolve from sleepy village to tourist mecca and he wants to have a say in where it goes next.
Mr Gudgeon presented a bold new idea to this month’s Byron Bay Chamber of Commerce meeting, calling for the business body and the shire’s two main tourism groups to come together. He said the chamber, Byron Visitors’ Centre and Tourism Byron needed to work together to form one tourism man- agement strategy. “Byron has moved from being a darling of the media to something people want to beat up on,” he said.
“It’s grown like a magnificent fruit tree in a wild forest, but everyone’s been picking the fruit and neglecting the tree.” However, Byron Shire mayor Jan Barham has similar plans of her own. At the next council meeting she will call for the establishment of a tourism committee. “For 12 years we’ve been trying to get an industry group together,” she said.
“But I’m concerned, under Mr Gudgeon’s proposal, that community members would fall away.” Mr Gudgeon will present a more detailed plan to next month’s chamber meeting, with the basic concept of establishing a peak tourism group and a long-term vision for the shire. “The groups that exist at the moment are doing a lot of good things, but we need to all get on the same page,” he said. Media beat-up on Byron, says police chief AN article in this week’s Sunday Telegraph headlined ‘Byron’s streets unsafe at night’ was a total beat-up, the town’s chief police officer Insp Owen King said yesterday.
Insp King said figures, reportedly from the North Coast Area Health Service, showing that up to six assault victims were being admitted to the Byron Bay Hospital every weekend were inaccurate. “Those figures don’t corelate with the number of assaults that are reported to police,” he said. Health service spokesman Robin Osborne, who was quoted in the article, also disagreed with the report. “It was an anecdotal figure that didn’t necessarily represent people who had been attacked in the street,” Mr Osborne said. “It’s not a high number. There would be more in Lismore but it’s difficult to quantify.”
By SAMANTHA TURNBULL
sturnbull@northernstar.com.au
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