Hi folks,
I’ve been in Byron Bay a week now. It’s the tourist Mecca of the Southern Hemisphere. Such a beautiful stretch of coast with a magical green-clad hinterland.
They call this the Rainbow Region and here you really can ‘catch a rainbow’. They’ve got this tourist train with carriages painted in bright rainbow colours. It’s called ‘The Rainbow’ and takes people through to the inland towns and villages. They’ve got quaint little stations at places like Booyong, Eltham and Bexhill with great cafes and gift shops.
Apparently the local community got tired of waiting on the government to repair the lines and bring back the trains so they organised to do it for themselves, formed a company, sold shares, secured loans, leased the line, used lots of volunteer labour to repair it section by section and then acquired a few old heritage steam trains. They run these on compressed macadamia shells grown locally.
You can even put your bike on the back carriage and ride out from any station along the way. They’ve got scenic trails everywhere along the tracks. The Rainbow takes people to some of the best Festival sites – Bluesfest, Splendour and the Lantern Parade in Lismore.
Every day it leaves Byron full of sightseers from all over the world. I even had to wait a few days to get a seat. The Rainbow Region Rail Company must be doing very well for itself. I’ve heard it pays handsome dividends to its local community member shareholders. What a great ride it is!
Garth Kindred, Rosebank
Ooooooh! i like the sounds of that! When will it be pulling in at a station near me? Cant wait!!!
Sounds like another pseudo hippie cum capitalistic daydream to me. More BS from the BS capital of the north coast. Who owns and maintains the rail lines? Who pays for that? How much capital will you need to raise and service it before the dream rail makes a profit? If the NSW government under Bob Carr couldn’t make money from it what makes you think you can?
You should brush up on your facts bob, then you will realise the train was actually wildly popular, until Labour started introducing cuts to services and therefore altered the timetable so no body used it. It was all Labours fault back then.
“Used volunteer labour”..that in itself would not stand up to scrutiny as anyone with half a brain will tell you the state government is the consent authority for all engineering works on its property and it is highly unlikely they will allow volunteers to work on their property. Anyway volunteerism is just a form of unpaid, slave labour. If someone is going to profit from this venture why should any sensible person give out their labour for free? Sounds like the same conjobs used to get people to volunteer for Splendour and Bluesfest, two highly profitable enterprises which bludge off the stupid.
Well maybe if SiTG and Bluesfest were actually kind, generous and giving they could pay people to work on such a project, considering this area is how they make so much money off their commercial festivals (and have for along time).