Archer’s project,
In the Land where the Crow flies backwards: The songs of western NSW, has as its centre point the songs of the infamous troubadour, Mr Dougie Young, but also looks at lesser-known characters from that era of the fifties and sixties and earlier, as well as up until today. The project focuses mainly on Indigenous songwriters, telling their stories through songs and poems, and of course the song of the red-tailed black cockatoo.
Archer is a folk singer, and self-proclaimed ill-fated explorer of the interior recesses of the embattled brain-box and beyond . Best described as an old-style travelling singer/poet, for the better part of the last 20 years, Archer has humped his bluey through every state in Australia, walking, hitchhiking, and catching trains, sleeping on the riverbanks and in the parks, singing in the streets, to performing in music halls of some renown. Searching for songs, old songs, forgotten songs and songs of his own making. Archer s genuine love
Michael McDonald Locals fought long and hard against Club Med in Byron Bay and eventually won through the courts. Photo Jeff Dawson.
The art of the peaceful protest has been a staple of Byron Shire life since the ‘new settlers’ arrived in the 1970s, searching for that rainbow at the end of conformity. It has taken on elements of theatre and of humour, often expressed through costume, dance, music and that ubiquitous medium, face-painting.
In 1991, as well as protests against indiscriminate government logging mentioned in Archive #2, some 400 people took to the streets of Byron Bay in January to protest against ‘the current crisis in the Persian Gulf’. Various luminaries addressed the rally at Main Beach, backed by a large banner, ’No Bloody War’.
Rous County Council Chair Keith Williams. Photo David Lowe.
Since the Dunoon Dam was shelved, Rous County Council has put a new draft of the Future Water Project 2060 on public exhibition. They are currently seeking feedback from people living in the four constituent councils of Richmond Valley, Byron, Ballina and Lismore.
In part two of this two part series,
The Echo sat down with Rous Chair Keith Williams to dig into the detail, and address some of the controversy around the future of water in the Northern Rivers.
Your opponents are currently attacking recycled water using quite inflammatory language. Is this damaging the prospects of success of projects like Perradenya, which some of these people have previously publicly supported?
Nan Nicholson, The Channon
I have been an environmental activist for over 50 years (I started when I was a 15 y/o schoolgirl in Melbourne). Some would call me ‘driven’.
Starting with Terania Creek, I have been involved in many campaigns to defend our rainforests, our old growth forests, and our beautiful rural landscapes from gas mining. Now I am fighting for the life of a rainforest that would be destroyed by a dam.
In all these cases I have been propelled by a powerful love of place, and of natural beauty. I think most Australians are familiar with this feeling, wherever they live. The first Australians certainly knew about it, with depths of connection that the rest of us can probably never understand. When the land is your religion, your history, your food source, your home, your responsibility, your future and your reason for being alive – then its preciousness can’t be described.
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