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Byron Shire
March 29, 2024

The Shape of Water

Latest News

Blue skies for Bluesfest day 1

If yesterday at Bluesfest was anything to go by, it's going to be an incredible event and with the weather holding, (so far) the Easter weekend's future is looking bright.

Other News

A health check as Medicare turns 40

If you’ll forgive the earnest tone, I’d like to propose a toast. To a friend who’s almost always there when you need them most. To a system that aims to treat people fairly and respectfully. 

Making Lismore Showground accessible to everyone

The Lismore Showground isn’t just a critical local community asset that plays host to a number of major events each year, but has also been used as an evacuation centre during past natural disasters in the region. 

Lismore Labor MP called out over native forest logging

More than five hundred people marched in the rain through Lismore to the local state member’s office in protest against government sanctioned native forest logging on Sunday.

Byron Council staff baulk at councillors’ promise of free parking for locals

Will Byron Council deliver on its pledge to make parking permits free for locals across the Shire when paid parking comes into force in Brunswick Heads?

Richmond MP again called on for immediate Gaza ceasefire 

On Saturday, March 16 Northern Rivers Friends of Palestine unfurled a 20m scroll with the names of murdered children and host a ‘die-in’ action at the office of the federal Member for Richmond, Justine Elliot (Labor).

We just love him!

If you’re over 50 you might not be a fan of Tom Jones, but you can bet your mum is. If you’re under 40 you might not even know who he is, but your grandmother probably wet her pants at the mere mention of his name.

For whatever obtuse reason, a media commentator recently refereed to this as a ‘horror movie’. Perhaps he had not yet seen it, for it is nothing of the kind. What it is is an out-and-out romance – and an adorable, fantastical, heart-stopping one at that – with ‘beauty and the beast’ as sub-genre. Distinct from the hum-drum of so much mainstream cinema, Mexican writer/director Guillermo del Toro is regarded as an inventive, unique and at times surreal filmmaker, but here he has turned his imaginative muscle to telling a simple story that is as old as the hills – or the tides, as it may be. Set in the Sixties, with the Cold War at its height, a strange, aquatic creature, human in form but with fins and webbed feet and hands, has been captured and brought to a US government laboratory where it will be studied and possibly vivisected. On her dreary rounds, a mute cleaner at the facility, Elisa (an intense, fragile performance from Sally Hawkins), inadvertently makes contact with the trapped creature and a strange intimacy grows between them after she starts sharing boiled eggs with him (the eggs and Elisa’s masturbating in the bath are part of del Toro’s rich symbolism and visual foreplay). The bad guy – and he is as bad as any classic melodrama demands – is Elisa’s boss Strickland (Michael Shannon), who preaches the Old Testament and cruelly tortures the creature with an electric prod. Del Toro cut his teeth on monsters and sci-fi, but he is also a champion of children and the powerless The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth, so it is no great stretch to see the diminutive Elisa, who is literally voiceless, as his child-like heroine. Narrator Giles, Elisa’s neighbour and confidante, a cat-loving homosexual, is also a solitary, out-of-step figure, while her closest workmate Zelda (Octavia Spencer) is black with a no-hoper husband. Passionate and visceral, violent and erotic, with a wondrous last scene, del Toro’s movie confirms his soaring status.


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Retired local professor launches book on grief

A leading international thinker and researcher in the development of innovative sport coaching and physical education teaching has returned home to Byron Bay and is launching his first non-academic book, 'Grief and Growth', on April 4 at The Book Room in Byron. 

Resilient Lismore’s ‘Repair to Return’ funding

On the eve of the second anniversary of the second devastating flood in 2022, Resilient Lismore has welcomed the finalisation of its funding deed with the NSW Reconstruction Authority, which will enable the continuation of its ‘Repair to Return’ program.

Editorial – Joyous propaganda! 

The NSW Labor government marked its one year in office this week with a jubilant statement of achievements issued from Macquarie Street HQ.

Man charged over domestic violence and pursuit offences – Tweed Heads

A man has been charged following a pursuit near Tweed Heads on Monday.