Byron Bay s body-to-body crowds and bungled COVID sewage tests worry locals
ThuThursday 31
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ThuThursday 31
DecDecember 2020 at 12:54pm
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Byron Bay locals fear a deadly cocktail is brewing as visitors flock to the popular destination for New Year s Eve celebrations, amid news that authorities have bungled the local COVID sewage testing results.
Key points:
Travellers from across Australia have been gathering in numbers each night at Byron Bay s foreshore park and beaches
Authorities confirm sewage samples taken for COVID testing were rendered invalid by being mistakenly frozen
Paul Bibby
Byron Council is holding its ground in the fight to protect a collection of Cypress Pines located in a Brunswick Heads holiday park, refusing an application that would have likely further decimated the endangered ecological community.
But local residents say the company responsible for the facility, Reflections Holiday Parks, is still continuing to amputate large branches from the trees, even while the matter is before the courts.
The pines in The Terrace holiday park have been the focus of a community-led preservation campaign for more than a decade.
The trees have a high level of both environmental and heritage value, having been home to native species on the site for more than half a century.
Byron Council is cracking-down on illegal camping this festive season – warning fines will be issued for breaches right across the shire.
Council says staff will be rostered on everyday and will target people sleeping in their car or camping in the street.
Number plate recognition technology will be used to record the details of people’s cars – with tickets being issued automatically.
text will be replaced
Paul Bibby
The judge’s gavel has fallen on one of the two DAs for a major housing development at West Byron, setting in stone the proposal from Tower Holdings to create 149 housing lots on the much fought-over site.
Some locals will be gnashing their teeth, others celebrating, while a fair few in the middle will be quietly acknowledging that things could have been a lot worse. Map of revised Villa World DA. Map by Dailan Pugh
But what are we actually going to get at West Byron?
First, the good news.
The plan for 149 lots is half of what Terry Agnew’s Tower Holdings (operating under the name Villaworld for the purposes of the recent court case) had asked for, and it is significantly less than the company’s original projections about the ‘maximum developable potential of the land’.
Ian Cohen, Broken Head
A family walks on Seven Mile Beach possibly admiring the birdlife. Four-wheel-drive joyriders rip up the beach dangerously close and give the finger in passing – all in the NO VEHICLE zone north of the Byron Shire border.
Police are called and they issue a warning. Really! Car power first, pedestrian families and wildlife last? Why must senseless slaughter of our wildlife continue unabated. It’s locals [causing the damage] as well as visitors. Further, it is becoming more dangerous to intervene.
The whole coastline needs greater protection – from South Ballina to the northern border of Byron Shire prohibit 4WDs from our beaches unless in possession of a Disability Pass or launching a boat. In Byron Shire the adequate rules simply need corresponding enforcement from police, NPWS and Byron Council.