IT was an early morning phone call to my house in Alcorn Street, Suffolk Park that alerted me to the fact that a low-loader carrying an excavator was reversing up Pacific Vista Drive at Byron Bay and heading to Paterson Hill, the site of a planned controversial 15-townhouse development.Read More…
IT probably said a lot about the changing fabric of the Byron Bay community when the much-loved Oleander Festival hit a brick wall in the early 1990s.
The death of the festival, which kicked off in the early 1960s and which, over the years, raised many thousands of dollars for community projects, including the town’s swimming pool, was hastened in February, 1992 when no-one stepped forward to take on the role as the event’s prime organiser.Read More…
IT’S rugby league finals time on the Far North Coast, and while Byron Bay-Lennox junior sides are represented, the Byron Bay Red Devils didn’t quite make it.Read More…
WITHOUT doubt, the best view of the Cape Byron lighthouse I have ever had in the nearly 40 years I have lived in the area, was from Ewingsdale Road, at a spot just about where the much-maligned silvery sculpture now sits in the middle of a roundabout.Read More…
WITH a thick mane of wavy, silver hair and a big and exuberant personality, Tony Narracott was hard to miss as he did the rounds of Byron Bay.
As executive officer for the Byron Bay Chamber of Commerce back in the 90s and a leading voice for the push for a Byron Bay bypass and an opponent of the plan to move Byron Council’s HQ to Mullumbimby and sell the council chambers at Byron Bay, livewire Tony had a significant public profile.Read More…
ONE of the major and long-running stories I covered in my time as a journalist at Byron Bay was the Native Title claim lodged over a wide area of coastal Crown land that stretched from Byron Bay to Broken Head.
It was lodged by sisters Lorna Kelly, Yvonne Graham, Linda Vidler and Dulcie Nicholls who long dreamed of one day returning to live on the land at Byron Bay where they had lived as children.Read More…
TODAY it has become home to multiple telecommunications antennae which, to many, has turned it into a highly visible eyesore.
But I remember the time when it was just the very ordinary Byron Bay water tower sitting on the top of Paterson Hill and a very obvious landmark from the sea for local fishos heading out to the Seven Mile and Nine Mile reefs.Read More…
IT was a case of time standing still when it came to the installation of the Byron Bay town clock that has been a fixture at the intersection of Jonson and Byron Streets for almost 30 years.Read More…
WHEN I told a much-loved uncle back in 1983 that we were moving to Byron Bay, he said be very careful because there had been a major radioactive scare in the town.
I don’t know why I wasn’t aware of the story because apparently it had made national headlines and caused major divisions in the town, but I wasn’t.Read More…
