Sue Arnold Ocean Shores.
The Shire is overwhelmed with tourists. It’s more like a war zone. On top of a massive influx of people coming to Byron for holidays, the Falls Festival is the last straw. Aerial photos of the Yelgun site demonstrate much the same level of patronage as the last Splendour which was acknowledged to be well over 30,000. Who checks the numbers ? No one. North Byron Parklands does what it likes.
Because of the heat, patrons from the site flooded into Brunswick ensuring that there were no parking spaces, big queues outside cafes and fast food joints, crowded footpaths, hundreds and hundreds of people crowding the river banks, hundreds if not thousands of people on the beach, Torakina looking more like a stuffed pond than a beach . Gridlock is still happening around Brunswick with locals having zero chance of finding a place to park.
We live near Devine’s Hill in Ocean Shores. Illegal camping has been happening every night for the last week and more. My husband on his early morning walk came across a couple having sex on the grass. They had to be careful because the site is littered with turds, toilet paper, empty bottles and rubbish. He and other neighbours regularly clean up the lookout as its a popular destination, Picking up turds is not a chore that neighbours will undertake nor should Council staff be obliged to do so.
Mountains of rubbish litter the walkways around Brunswick. Ocean Shores shopping centre is similarly overwhelmed with festivalgoers who park their cars there overnight if they have local accommodation. No rangers come to check the status of vehicles. No rangers come to Devine’s Hill lookout. Illegal camping is happening all over the shire.
The amenity of ratepayers and people who live in Byron is completely destroyed. Byron has been over-sold by the tourist industry and the festival cartel. We have been continually disturbed by the noise from Falls as has our neighbourhood.
If Council does not take immediate steps to object to the efforts of North Byron Parklands to gain approval from the State Government to be designated a State Significant Development with 12 events allowing 50,000 people and eight events allowing 25,000, it is clear that Byron will be completely transmogrified into an appalling place with an infrastructure and a community that cannot cope. It is incomprehensible that North Byron Parklands should have the right to turn Byron Shire into their ‘playground’ whilst the community not only pays for the damage but is driven from the Shire because of the appalling invasion.
Given the efforts of council to persuade ratepayers to cough up a 12.5 per cent increase to cover the cost of this invasion, it is clear that councillors and council staff hold the community in contempt.
In all the years I’ve lived here, I have never seen such a shocking situation. Byron is not a ‘green shire’. Money, greed and a complete inability of council to protect the natural assets and the beauty of this place will ensure its ultimate destruction.
Councillors have an obligation to take action or be regarded as complicit in the sad destruction of the shire.
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. 
