The Byron Bay blues

Council banned the street party in a move that had considerable resident support and, led by Greens mayor Jan Barnham, council put on a family-oriented event and banned the drinking and the carrying of alcohol in the town centre. It will not be easy to change the town’s reputation but some locals are trying.

Too many, too often

Local Greens state Upper House MP, Ian Cohen is a surfer who moved to Broken Head, 10 minutes drive south of Byron, in the 1970s. He was elected to the Senate after making several close runs at local government.

Cohen is a tall, imposing and athletic figure who, since becoming a politician, has lost the hard, argumentative edge he once had. That confrontational anger was exemplified by a story of how, in the late-80s, he was driving to town when he encountered local surfing identity, Rusty Miller, standing by his broken down car. Miller, who now produces a Byron tourism guide and gives private surfing lessons, featured in George Greenough’s surfing movies and was a champion US surfer in days gone by.

The story goes that Cohen stopped his car and got out not to assist Miller but to abuse him for supposedly supporting a proposed Broken Head educational-tourism development, where he was said to have been going to teach surfing. That done, Cohen got into his van and drove off, leaving Miller stranded. That story may be apocryphal but it shows how controversy over tourism has split opinion in town.

Cohen recently acknowledged the impact of tourism and its sometimes negative consequences when he referred to Byron’s “annual tourist invasion”. So too has Miller who, in an editorial on his website refers to tourism and the stresses it imposes on the town. “If you read the local papers you will see that much of the copy and dialogue concern our situation of over inundation. Too many, too often”, he concludes.

The cluster of travel service agencies on Jonson Street caters more or less solely to Byron’s burgeoning backpacker tourist population. Inside these agencies are banks of Internet terminals packed with backpackers catching up on their email while, outside, staff hand out advertising leaflets and corner potential customers for the adventure activity businesses in town - skydiving, surfing schools, trips to the rainforest in the hills, bus trips to Nimbin.

It is interesting to observe how they discriminate - they are usually backpackers themselves - in whom they approach and avoid. If you look local then you are ignored - they look past you as if you don’t exist. Likewise, if you look over 30 you are similarly disregarded.

Some locals see these businesses as a type of opportunistic overlay on the authentic matrix of the town, their market an ephemeral one just like the backpackers they serve. It is as if two cultures are overlaid - the local one and the backpacker demimonde - two cultures that have little by way of mutual interest and even less in common.

It is true that this part of town has been transformed by the backpacker industry and you can understand how some locals believe that this has made Byron a town that caters mainly for tourists, not residents. It was in response to charges of late night noise, littering, rowdy and violent behaviour by its clients that the backpacker industry, especially the owners of the plentiful backpacker accommodation in town, last year made known their efforts to curb behavioural problems. They also drew attention to the income the industry brings Byron.

At the same time the issue of tourist noise in residential properties let for short term holiday accommodation came to a head and council proposed intervention. Yet another controversy in a small town which, this time, stimulated efforts by the holiday letting industry to regulate the behaviour of its clients more thoroughly. There now exists an industry hotline to curb rowdy visitors.

Exacerbating the backpacker controversy is their sheer visibility. Backpackers, whether welcomed, criticised or simply accepted and ignored by locals - all three are true - are in such numbers that they are a dominant visible presence, adding to the perception that Byron is being overrun by outsiders.

Noise an issue too

There are other issues that trouble this supposedly idyllic town. Noise is one of them.