Brunswick Heads is a special place. Like so many kids, I spent my childhood swimming around the river and meeting my grandfather coming back in from fishing trips.
But the plans to commercialise the foreshore reserves at Brunswick Heads undermines the relaxed and family-friendly character that the town is renowned for.
The idea that the beautiful grassy picnic area behind Torakina Beach would be replaced by a car park, and that an over-size deck would almost engulf Banner Park is unacceptable to locals who treasure Brunswick Heads for being a relaxed and low-key place to enjoy.
The Greens are calling on the NSW Crown Holiday Parks Trust to go back to the drawing board with their current plans to commercialise the foreshore reserves around Brunswick Heads. Even better, management of the reserves and caravan parks should be retuned back to Council to provide a revenue stream to ratepayers, after being ripped away by the last Labor Government in 2006.
The Greens are committed to returning planning powers back to local communities. Across NSW, both Labor and LNP Governments have removed planning decisions from local communities and handed it over to bureaucrats or developers with a profit motive for public lands.
I’m calling on the National and Labor Party candidates for Ballina to show their hands on this issue and let the community know if they support these inappropriate development plans for Brunswick Heads.
Brunswick Heads is too special to loose.
Tamara Smith, Greens Candidate for Ballina
All NSW Election 2015 Articles
More NSW Election 2015 news and articles
Bruns is indeed special Tamara but please please pleeeeaaaassse tone down the rhetoric – I find you, along with your supporters, exaggerate the proposals – only a small section of the grassy picnic area behind Torakina Beach is being made into a carpark not the entire park like you infer + only a small section will be decked in Banner Park not all of it like you infer. I see so many letters + videos from fellow supporters against these proposals circulating via the Echo + Facebook which are factually incorrect that I think it is damaging your/our case.
Brunswich Heads is a special place because the Indiginous Australians, the Aborigines, looked after it and cared for it for 80,000 years.
White people have been a recent addition to the area. The whites are but a speck on the history of Australia as the Aborigine kept the place spick and span as is the grains of sands on the beach. This area, the far north coast of New South Wales is part of Australia and our PM, Tony Abbott said that Australia was empty at the time of Captain Cook when he, the great captain of the bark Endevour according to white rule discovered the east coast of Australia.
The Aborigine discovered Australia maybe up to 125,000 years ago. If Australia was empty at that time of Cook then the place called Brunswich Heads would not be the place that it was when the white people first saw it as they in spirit turned green with envy. They did.
A coin was tossed into the air and that coin came down heads. Brunswick is the historical English name for the German city of Braunschweig.
Before white habitation, the far north coast was a quiet place. Not a car or a car park in sigh or near the beach.
The people of today could not imagine that a car and its rumble was not here for up to 125,000 years.
Brunswich Heads is far too special to lose to the car park and the vehicle.
Brunswick Heads is tired, and its reputation as a relaxed and “family-friendly” place is its undoing. The over exposure by Simple Pleasures and others has made the town unbearable on weekends and holidays – we live here and rarely leave home at these times. The parking problem at Torakina means cars park anywhere – or haven’t you noticed? Banner Park needs a facelift because of the human traffic that come here for the “low-key” atmosphere and subsequently make it the opposite, also bringing their dogs to terrorise local wildlife as what happened on Friday when a Wallaby was mauled at the oceans edge by a pet. Simple Pleasures!
Tamara the “carpark replacing the grassy picnic area behind Torakina beach” is in fact only taking a small amount of the park, so nothing for NSWCHPT to change there. The “oversize deck that would almost engulf Banner park” also only takes up a small area, so nothing for NSWCHPT to change there either. Too easy!