Byron is booming, locals are fuming. James Weir parachutes into this celeb mecca – and discovers the biggest mystery about the town’s most famous resident.
Byron is booming, locals are fuming. James Weir parachutes into this celeb mecca – and discovers the biggest mystery about the town’s most famous resident.
News by James Weir  Nothing attracts rich white people like the Big Little Lies theme song. It s playing in a boutique kids toy store just off the main drag of Byron Bay while the owner talks about the tsunami of celebrities and wealthy city folk that has crashed onto the once-sleepy, surfy shire. If they re not the soul that s meant to be here, they get spat out and they end up going back to wherever it is they came from, Mel Sainsbury says about the newcomers who ve decided to not just visit the beach town but pull a Hemsworth by buying up, moving in, putting on a hemp shirt and calling it home.
 It s the most bizarre holiday period we ve ever seen, says Michael Visser, who manages the retro Bay Motel that looks out over Main Beach. Byron is now a meme, concludes a lanky hipster resident. His name is Snake. We re sitting in Wreck Surf - one of the last-standing long-running businesses that remain in town - in a part of the shop that owner Bert Reid has converted into a cafe to keep up with the increasingly trendy demo. If it s a place where celebrities go, then rich people go there and then vacuous people who follow celebrities will go there and wanna be seen, Snake continues.
 It s the most bizarre holiday period we ve ever seen, says Michael Visser, who manages the retro Bay Motel that looks out over Main Beach. Byron is now a meme, concludes a lanky hipster resident. His name is Snake. We re sitting in Wreck Surf - one of the last-standing long-running businesses that remain in town - in a part of the shop that owner Bert Reid has converted into a cafe to keep up with the increasingly trendy demo. If it s a place where celebrities go, then rich people go there and then vacuous people who follow celebrities will go there and wanna be seen, Snake continues.