Personally, I find the non-stop redevelopment happening along South Beach Lane in Brunswick Heads far more annoying than the young people picnicking and planting pineapples in the park.
The large three-storey buildings with visually imposing awnings and huge verandahs hanging over the laneway are far more intrusive than the van campers. It’s all happening without Council oversight, and those tradies and their power tools certainly must impact on the mood of the handful of locals still living on this busy tourist strip.
Byron Shire Council’s kneejerk reaction to close off the car park area – that was stolen from the crown reserve parkland during a previous parking crisis – is absolutely pathetic. I thought I was reading a Murdoch publication with quotes from our once Green Mayor stating: ‘I think we need to develop a reputation for zero-tolerance for illegal van camping’.
Ralph James, Council’s head of compliance, is on the record stating that Council rangers will not be targeting homeless people in the crackdown on van campers. He assured the community that rangers can identify the difference between the homeless, and travellers reluctant to pay exorbitant prices for a campsite, when Council first adopted the policy and started rolling out the signposts prohibiting parking from 1am to 6am in acres of vacant car parks all over the Shire.
‘We don’t want to live in a ‘police state’ but we do want to live in a Shire where people are following the rules,’ Cr Lyon said.
Those rules don’t seem to apply to the substandard accommodation and Airbnbs operating illegally in residential areas that Council has never pursued with the same vigour or determination. Both Byron Council and state boffins frequently bend the rules for those developers wanting extra height or floor space – or who like to build on floodplains and dump loads of fill.
Mr Lyon is reading from Tony Abbott’s book for boofheads. Pick on those least able to fight back. Let’s torment young people who can’t afford a home and are burdened with university fees and punish them for daring to holiday in Byron Shire without paying someone for the privilege. Let’s threaten them with $1,000-a-night fines for sleeping in our streets and harass them with aggro cops and rangers pounding on the windows at 3am.
For two decades the Council’s hardline attitude has failed to deter street camping. They have failed to consider any solutions beyond dumping a handful of camp sites in the blazing sun at the showgrounds or near the sportsfield in the Industrial estate for a limited time with the fees increasing recently, discouraging the most needy.
Council could utilise prime sites like the old Pacific Highway area and the old Finns building next to Ferry Reserve for overnight campers – a site that has remained vacant since 2007. There’s rail land from M’bah to Casino currently up for grabs. Far better solutions could be implemented with that $250,000 – like actually opening up the big car parks at Ocean Shores, Mullum, and Byron and letting campers gather safely for the night; they might even give you a gold coin donation. They’d pay a premium to stay in those fabulous beachfront car parks!
I urge Mr Lyon and his friends to find a better solution. Our crown reserve caravan parks have priced themselves out of the market. We need affordable sites for the thousands of young people who want to visit instead of using brute force to toss them out and imposing huge fines. Why don’t we have a positive outcome for young campers and homeless people in the Byron playbook? You bend over backwards for those developers.
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. 
