Oh Dear Lordess, if only there were some leadership around this place.
Apologies for banging on about it – as I have before.
Let’s take Mullumbimby.
Without any interest from councillors to make improvements, it looks set to just continue to deteriorate more and more.
I am not talking about the good looking individuals that make up this town. You are all wonderful. And all you people in Mullumbimby do wonderful things.
It’s about leadership. If there was leadership, a budget might be found to weed the gardens more often, and actually build kerbs and gutters, so drainage improves.
Last weekend’s flash flooding was another reminder that this town (like parts of Ocean Shores, etc) is on a floodplain, and does not have the drainage infrastructure to cope.
It’s not entirely fair to bag Council for this lack of civic pride – the reality is that they are over a barrel with their overlords, the state and federal governments.
Yet surely there could be improvements.
Have you seen the state of the surrounds around Council’s own buildings, for example? For years, the rail corridor and adjacent car park has been overgrown and full of potholes!
It’s not as though Council doesn’t have access to a personal army of road and garden crews.
Who knows, if Council found a leader somewhere in the building and stuff improved, it may spark interest from commercial landowners around town to step up do some renovations on their own buildings too.
Yes, it’s a tough job being leader.
The last Council tried to improve Burringbar Street by restricting car movements and adding more trees, but had to back down after the unwashed masses gave it a hard ‘no’.
It’s just the leaders at the time weren’t very good. So now we have slightly new ones.
This leads to what is shaping up now in the town – a slow motion planning disaster.
Let’s all get land conned
On Monday afternoon, I attended the public meeting at the Ex-Services Club around plans to build 32-units over a car park at the entrance to the town, as well as the proposal to relocate that car park to the entry of the town, opposite the former Tony Carsburg site (see page 1).
It’s led by NSW government development agency Landcom, and the plans so far presented are like what a speculating developer generally submits – unrealistic excessive bulk and scale to maximise profit.
You would hope governments would lead with best design principles, but no.
The feeling in the room from attendees was under-whelming.
And while the Landcom folk were polite, there was a genuine lack of understanding of the challenges this town faces. And why would they care anyway?
Councillors should. Making Mullum better would endear them to this community more than this ugly bullshit. Who do these councillor represent?
Feedback on the Landcom proposal is open until December 9 at www.joinin.landcom.nsw.gov.au/mullumbimby.
Hans Lovejoy, editor
Yep typical greens political party argument, want more housing but not near them.
Well spotted!
Totally agree Hans – but I don’t think Council has an army of outdoor staff – seems to me in Byron the Spinifex group manage to put mulch on the garden beds and that’s about it.
Byron township is so grubby, there is not a gurney in sight, rarely see a crew about. I did see a Council employee with a leaf blower near Aldi the other day probably after mowing the lawn near the clock with a whipper snipper and blowing the cuttings into the gutter.
Occasionally there is a couple of guys mowing the lawn at the park opposite the Beach Hotel. What do the Chamber of Commerce do to make the town clean, each real estate shop should at least gurney their footpaths and the rest of the street.
Council will say its all money but if $200 is allocated from the rates we pay each year a lot of gurnerying can be done.
I do notice many parts of Mullumbimby’s CBD kerb and guttering still has 2022 flood mud. Whens that getting cleaned up? Don’t council own street sweepers?
We use to have clean towns ‘tidy towns’ up and down the North Coast. Mullum was always beautiful as was Brunswick Heads and Byron. Since the ‘City’ element has arrived and old locals gone or passed our towns resemble the city streets they all came from and they all think themselves so beautiful inhabiting the place. For all the money council makes on rates for the thousands of newcomers and new homes all over the shire surely you’d think they could fix the potholes in Booyong that have been there for years now and fix the road they built new and left 100m of road not made new? Why? Byron and now Mullum and Brunswick heads resemble smelling like Kings Cross and not our North Coast towns we grew up in. Shame on them . They need to take all the city people and teach them how to live here and treat the area before letting them loose on the area!
Go over the brunswick bridge towards the surf club south road
and seriously the roads in Cambodia are better ..
Also Stan Thompson oval road …both in the past
40 years have had no resurfacing…embarrassing !
Byron council clearly does not have a skilled workforce.
I totally agree with the needed clean up. I was bred in Mullum, and have never known it to have a major flood. There were the usual flooding areas in the low lying eastern end of New City Road, and down near the old Norco building end between Station and Dalley Sts, but that was it….. My parents were in the SES, and involved with the evacuations. What has changed? How long is it since the river has been dredged? How much buildup is in the river in Bruns river now? Is it a coincidence that the water in the river which was once very deep, is now shallow, sand visible, and it now floods up stream? Is it not kosher to dredge the river any more?
The Byron Shire roads have always been notoriously bad, and the butt of jokes among the locals, and I’ve never understood why, with the high rates for the area (and now paid parking).
Great idea from Thelma Knibb re allocating $200 per rate payer per year for gurneying the towns… With cleaner streets, roads fixed, and no flooding, town morale should return to being strong and healthy again.
Agreed, Folks 🙂
but it’s Gerni (a brand-name pressure-washer that’s become generic, like Hoover/hoover).
A gurney is the trolley-bed that paramedics use to wheel patients in and out of hospitals and ambulances.
🙂
As you were.