Neil Matterson, Byron Bay
In these challenging times (COVID-19) it was nice last week to also get a laugh. Not a Comedy Festival type laugh, but a laugh following a ‘yeah, good luck with that!’ type laugh. I refer to the aims of the Sustainable Visitor Strategy developed by Byron Council. It appears they can live with the potential for 3.86 million visitors a year by 2030.
Along with some commendable aims encompassing environmentally sustainable business practices, they also aim to provide ‘specific behaviour expectations’ for visitors.
Byron is not a local town. It’s a tourist town. Visitors are feted with a coffee shop every twelve and a half paces and a dress shop in between.
They pay to come here and do as they please, because they consider they only have themselves to please. A lot is written about how much value (money) tourists bring to towns. True. But who does it go to? Certainly not to many locals.
No-one pays me to put up with poor internet because it is overloaded by tourists. No-one compensates me because it takes twice as long (as in the ‘off-season’) to park, shop or go to the beach. Because of the limited access to Byron it cannot just keep expanding without dire consequences.
But it appears that commerce will keep leading the agenda.
‘Look at that. They destroyed the town.’
‘Yeah, but someone got their money!’
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. 
