With the sentiments expressed in Paul Jones’s letter regarding the final approval decision given to Byron Bay’s Butler Street bypass, I heartily concur.
At least Paul Jones (president, Butler Street Community Network) had the determination to attend the hearing in Mullumbimby recently, where the decision was summarily handed down by the chairman of that ‘independent’ panel.
I was so sceptical of the outcome that I felt it would be a futile effort to try and attend myself. I think it significant we’re close by what the Americans call a ‘rail road’.
I also agree with Echonetdaily‘s ‘quote of the week’ printed recently, about the significance of this decision in the ongoing process of turning Byron Bay into what is ever more like an extension of the Gold Coast, a sort of quasi-Little Queensland.
I will say here that I have never seen a place developed so quickly with scant regard to quality of life for most residents.
Obviously many will not share my opinions, but I feel that many others will share my deep dismay at the way the town and area is being sold off.
A friend of mine from Melbourne who has known the area and place for many years remarked that , ‘It just isn’t relaxing any more.’
I suppose there is no reason why it should be. But it is, I think, a question of balance, and I believe the balance has tipped.
I am well aware that the population of this planet has more than doubled since I was young in the seventies.
I have only to look at small seaside towns in Cornwall, like St Ives, which recently forbade the building of new houses in which the owner did not intend to reside.
Or Bermuda, where I once lived, about which which a writer on economics matters with whom I am acquainted and who left the island after several decades there, remarked that Bermuda’s main problem was ‘greed’.
I don’t imagine it has the premium on that, as this place [and many others] demonstrates well.
I will say here, unequivocally, I believe that this process of so called development will prove the kiss of death for the old spirit of place here.
Over 20 years ago I wrote a tiny piece in the Byron Shire Echo about killing the Byron Goose, the one that laid the golden eggs.
I believe that process is well underway. The bypass is not going to ameliorate the traffic congestion here. If other developments go ahead, a state of gridlock will, I predict, become the norm, as it often is these days.
I once watched a British television film called Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise. That fine actor Timothy Spall plays a fanatical vacuum cleaner salesman, who takes a young tyro under his dubious wing.
He teaches his protege his mantra, which he uses like a battle cry: ‘Sell, sell, f…ing sell!’
His manic obsession drives him insane and he dies of a heart attack on Blackpool sands; the inexorable sea washes towards him oblivious, as it will do here.
The city I grew up in has the motto: ‘Forward’ (where? One could ask, but there were definite civic improvements under the great Joseph Chamberlain).
Perhaps this town could use the salesman’s mantra officially, as it already is doing, de facto, as it were.
David Morris, Glen Villa resort, Byron Bay
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
