IT’S hard to imagine that a proposal for a much-needed new public school could acrimoniously split a town in two, but that’s what happened at Byron Bay in the late 1980s.
There was never any conflict over the need for a new school, it was where it was to be built that prompted a sometimes bitter and personal stoush that continued for more than a year.
It was a fight that developed into a full-scale war of words, mostly through the pages of the Northern Star, that created a rift that took years to heal.
On one side was Byron Council which had agreed to a land-swap deal with the Education Department and the NSW Lands Department to accommodate a new Byron Bay Public School on a section of the town’s Recreation Ground, and the school’s P & C Association which had been negotiating with the State Government for eight years for a new school to meet the demands of an exploding population.
On the other side vehemently opposing the plan were the reactivated Byron Bay Action Group, various sports groups and the Byron Bay RSL sub-branch.
Also embroiled in the dust-up were the Education Minister Dr Terry Metherell, Natural Resources Minister Ian Causley, Ballina MP Don Page, Regional Director of Education Lionel Phelps, the NSW Teachers’ Federation and the Byron Bay branch of the ALP.
The momentum for a new school was given a kick-along in early 1988 when teachers at the school called on their federation’s support because of the “desperate” situation at the school.
Occupying 1.8ha, the school fell well short of the minimum area of 3ha set by the Education Department for development of a new school.
Many of the school’s 550 pupils were housed in demountables, which, over the years, had encroached on to diminishing playing areas and school buildings, toilets and drinking facilities were sub-standard.
Lionel Phelps said his department had looked at various sites for a new school, but none had proved satisfactory.
With the crowding situation at the school getting worse, the quest to find a new site intensified in early 1988 with the P & C and teachers fearing the school would miss out on funding for another year.
Lionel Phelps said he was becoming “desperate” after all possible Crown land options, including the Sandhills Estate, had been investigated and eliminated as not being suitable.
As a result, in March that year, Mr Phelps approached Byron Council to see if it could help identify a possible site.
He and other departmental officers and officials from the Lands Department met with Shire President Cr Oliver Dunne and senior council officers at the council’s Byron Bay offices.
It was at this meeting that the Recreation Ground was brought up as a possible site for a new school.
But who actually raised the site as a possibility is a mystery.
Mr Phelps said it came out of a brainstorming session at the meeting.
“Somebody said it was a pity we could not consider the Recreation Ground as the site for a school,” he said at the time.
“Somebody else said, ‘Why not consider it?’
“But who said it – I would not have a clue.”
Don Page thought otherwise. He said he had been shown “irrefutable evidence” that the Recreation Ground proposal had come from Byron Council.
However, at a later Byron Council meeting, Cr Dunne said the Recreation Ground proposal had come from the Education Department and not the council.
“The department approached the council to identify a site in Byron Bay for a new school,” he said.
“It wasn’t me or the council’s senior officers.”
Irregardless of where the idea came from, it sprouted into a fully-fledged proposal worked out by the Education Department and the Lands Department which went public in June.
And basically the proposal was this:
- The Education Department was to get 3ha of the Recreation Ground (the two hockey fields on the eastern side) for its school.
- The council was to get control of the existing school site and buildings for community use.
- The council was to get 7ha of Crown land adjacent to the Byron Bay High School to develop as sports fields.
- The Education Department was to give $50,000 to the council towards the development of those fields.
Byron Council backed the proposal and saw it as a pretty good deal, with Cr Oliver Dunne referring to it as a “one-off golden opportunity”.
It was not a view shared by the Byron Bay Cricket Club which was the first group to voice its opposition to the proposal.
The cricketers were quickly joined by other sporting clubs and the dormant Byron Bay Action Group, which some years earlier had successfully fought to save the town’s hospital, in opposing the Recreation Ground plan.
They were later joined by the Byron Bay RSL sub-branch which claimed the ground was a memorial park for fallen service people and should not be touched.
The school’s P & C president, Jill Cowley, said she was surprised with the stance of the sporting groups.
“We see a lot of merit in the Recreation Ground proposal and we can’t see how the sporting groups can lose from it,” she said.
In late June, Education Minister Dr Terry Metherell approved the Recreation Ground concept with the signature of Natural Resources Minister Ian Causley, still required for the land-swap part of the proposal.
All of which sparked opponents to call a public meeting to air their concerns.
More than 150 people who turned up at the meeting at the Byron Bay Surf Club passed a vote of no confidence in Byron Council’s handling of the issue.
John Donoghue, the then secretary-manager of the Byron Bay Services Club and who became the public face of the Byron Bay Action Group, said the decision to put the school on such an “historic” site was “scandalous”.
He said the ground was the last bit of green space in the middle of the town and it was an integral part of the town’s sporting activities.
Bob Crosthwaite, president of the Byron Bay RSL sub-branch, which had the backing of the NSW head office, said records in the Mitchell Library in Sydney had shown that the Recreation Ground had been dedicated as a memorial park.
Meeting at the Ocean Shores Country Club in July, the council voted to accept the Recreation Ground proposal put forward by the State Government.
But not all councillors supported the move with Crs Warren Simmons, Keith Haines and Cyril James voting against it.
Cr Simmons said there had not been a lot of community input into the proposal.
“It’s a backward move – you don’t build schools on recreation grounds,” he said.
The following month, Cr Simmons called on the council to write to ministers, Dr Terry Metherell and Ian Causley, and ask them to defer any decision on the siting of a new school until an assessment of community attitudes had been established.
Ian Causley, who had still not signed off on the deal, said the “consultation” process on the Recreation Ground proposal had not ended.
Subsequently in September, with a final decision on the Recreation Ground plan seemingly getting no closer, a working party comprising Byron Council and Education Department representatives , came up with four other options to be considered.
They were:
- The existing school site.
- A combination of the Recreation Ground and the Sandhills Estate.
- Private land in central Byron Bay.
- Sandhills Estate.
Later that month, community, Byron Council and Education Department representatives, after a five-hour meeting, decided that land on the Sandhills Estate to be made available by Ian Causley was the best site for a new school.
But regional director of Education, Lionel Phelps, was quick to point out that the possible $1 million cost of buying the Sandhills land could place the whole project in jeopardy.
In yet another twist to the saga, Ian Causley, later in October, offered Dr Terry Metherell a clean swap of 1.5ha of the sensitive Sandhills Estate for the existing school site.
Under this new deal, the Education Department was to seek Byron Council’s consent to use the cricket field on the adjacent Recreation Ground as the school’s playing area, and the existing school site was to be sold on the open market.
That never happened of course.
In November, the wheel turned full circle when Dr Metherell and Mr Causley confirmed they wanted to proceed with the Recreation Ground proposal.
Dr Metherell said extra engineering costs had ruled out the Sandhills option and he would be again seeking the backing of Byron Council for the Recreation Ground proposal.
He added that he needed a quick decision from the council in order to get the project on to the 1989/90 capital works program.
Byron Bay Action Group’s spokesman, John Donoghue, was “dismayed” by the decision and shire president, Cr Oliver Dunne, slammed the State Government over its handling of the issue.
Cr Dunne said the council had been “totally left out” of the latest school site negotiations and it was grossly unfair that the council should be placed in a position to make a decision that “essentially should be the State Government’s”.
But councillors did vote and once again reaffirmed its support for the Recreation Ground proposal, with Crs Warren Simmons, Cyril James and Brian Boniface voting against.
However, there were more twists and turns to come.
In March 1989, Byron Council voted to seek urgent talks with Dr Metherell and Mr Causley on the issue and also voted to request the Education Department to suspend further planning for the school pending the outcome of the meeting.
That didn’t go down too well with Dr Metherell who attacked the council for causing delays in funding of a new school.
He said the council had changed its mind four times on the issue since he had been the minister.
“You just reach the point finally when you say ‘don’t they want the school’?” he said.
Dr Metherell said he wanted to give Byron Bay a new school, but the council didn’t know what it wanted.
Responding, Cr Dunne said he could understand Dr Metherell’s concerns and frustrations.
“I am pretty sick of this issue myself,” he said. “It has been before council four times last year and again at last Tuesday’s meeting.
“We are now going around in circles”
While Cr Dunne was hopeful the project would remain on the funding program, the Byron Bay Action Group blamed the choice of the Recreation Ground and lack of community consultation for the delay in funding for a new school.
Late in March, three councillors, Ian Kingston, Rob Doolan and Gwyn James, accused the National Party of a “thinly-veiled” attempt to destroy the council over the siting of a new school.
The three accused the National Party of meddling in local government affairs and Nationals Ballina MP, Don Page, of attempting to use the council and the Byron Bay community as a “battering ram” in a factional fight with Education Minister, Dr Metherell.
It was a charge angrily dismissed by Mr Page who dismissed the accusations as “absolute garbage”.
Bizarrely, the sorry saga took yet another twist shortly after in April when Cr Dunne slammed Dr Metherell and Don Page for doing an “about turn” on the siting of a new school.
He said Dr Metherell had stated there were no new site options, apart from the Recreation Ground, and took the planned school off 1989/90 capital works program.
Now, he said, through the pages of the Northern Star, he had learned that Dr Metherell did have another option “with which he was comfortable”.
This new option, announced by Ballina MP, Don Page, involved siting a new primary school north of Byron Bay High School and next to the then planned St Finbarr’s Catholic primary school.
Under the proposal, improvements would be made to the existing school and pupil numbers reduced with the new school catering for south Byron Bay and Suffolk Park.
Cr Dunne said the council had worked hard alongside the department for a year and councillors had taken all the flak for a decision that should have been made by Dr Metherell and Mr Page.
He said the council had constantly been told that the department had strong objections to the proposed site adjacent to the high school.
“Why has it taken a year for the department to change the rules which had ruled out these sites previously?” he asked.
Towards the middle of April in 1989, on the motion of Cr Anudhi Wentworth and without the support of Crs Dunne, Doolan and Kingston, the council voted to tell Dr Metherell that it no longer supported the Recreation Ground proposal, but favoured a new school to be built at Suffolk Park.
Obviously frustrated with the way the saga was twisting and turning, Cr Dunne said the difficulties had been compounded by the fact that the council had to deal with the State Government on three fronts – Dr Metherell, Mr Causley, their respective departments and Ballina MP, Don Page.
“This situation ultimately has led to confusion, breakdowns in communications, or a complete lack of communication,” he said.
In the same month, council officials told Dr Metherell, Mr Causley and Mr Page at a meeting in Sydney that they didn’t favour the Recreation Ground proposal, but supported the refurbishment of the existing school and a new school at Suffolk Park.
Just days after that meeting, the Recreation Ground plan was laid to rest with the State Government announcing a $2 million redevelopment project for the existing school and a promise of a new school for Suffolk Park.
While the Byron Bay Action Group and sporting groups expressed relief that the threat to the Recreation Ground’s future had been lifted, the school’s P & C Association slammed the decision.
President Jill Cowley said children were condemned forever to be schooled on a flood-prone, crowded site in demountable and second-rate buildings’.
Not holding back, Ms Cowley said the association for 13 months had been led a “merry dance with the reward of a new school being dangled in front of our noses”.
She said the association regarded the outcome as a “sell-out” by Dr Metherell and Byron Council.
In June 1989, the secretary of the P & C Association, Anne Vaughan, said that given the decade-long history of abandoned plans for school facilities, the fear remained that a refurbished school would become even more severely overcrowded before a Suffolk Park school opened.
However, history has shown that the refurbishment was completed and proved to be successful.
Ironically, after a spirited local campaign, the site later set aside in Beech Drive at Byron Hills in Suffolk Park for a new school, was sold to Byron Council by the State Government in late 2016 for $900,000 to be used for community purposes.