Paterson Hill Blockade – 20 years on

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.

For the life of me, I can’t remember who made that call on October 28, 1999, but I do recall the urgency in the message.

There’s no doubt the caller would have been part of a growing group of local residents opposing the development and the call was made to me because I was editor of the Byron Shire News and was very well aware of the issue having written many stories over several years.

There was little doubt it was going to be a big day in the continuing saga which pitted Detala Pty Ltd, which owned the prime Paterson Street site, against the local community and environmentalists.

The site had commanding ocean views and had been rezoned for residential purposes in the 1980s.

I knew the site very well. When living in Bangalow Road, I used to regularly take my dog there to give him a run.

Detala had received approval from the Land and Environment Court for the development, but there were a large number of consent conditions attached to that approval which prevented an immediate start on the project.

Opponents, led by Peter Hamilton and Veda Turner from the Paterson Hill Action Group,  fought against the approval to save a unique and rare dwarf heath and a ground orchid species – Diuris Byronensis – unique to Byron Bay and once thought extinct.

And there was also the rare wollum froglet found in the Cimbum Margil wetland below the site.

On that day in October 1999, I parked at the bottom of Pacific Vista Drive and walked up the lower side of the split road to the development site.

Tensions were high even before I got to the top with local residents involved in a slanging match with protesters over parking.

At the top, I saw a yellow Kombi and another car parked across the down-side of the road with the low-loader below them.

Initially, there was only a small group of protesters, but numbers quickly grew during the morning and the day with some observers putting the final number close to 1000 people.

What became known as the Paterson Hill Blockade saw a large police force physically remove people during the day-long action with more than 60 people arrested.

But the blockade worked. While the site had been pegged out, no major work was carried out.

For local residents and environmentalists, it was a major victory when in 2000, the Land and Environment Court ruled that development consent had lapsed and that to progress the development, Detala had to get a construction certificate or subdivision approval from Byron Council.

Detala appealed that decision, but in December 2002, the court dismissed the appeal and ordered Detala to pay the court costs.

After lengthy negotiations, Detala sold the site to the State Government in 2004 and it was added to the Arakwal National Park.

It was a major win for the Paterson Hill Action Group – and a magnificent asset saved for all to enjoy.

PHOTOS: Just some of the many images I captured that day at Paterson Hill.