If there was a university degree called ‘Thorn In The Side’, then Kathy Norley wrote the curriculum.
The long-time South Golden Beach (SGB) local has not only been a constant watchdog of Byron Shire Council, she is the person you want on your team to get things done!
Born in Sydney to a teenage mum and father ‘unknown’, she was immediately adopted out to a wonderful family, and was constantly on the go from the very start.
‘My mother acted as if she was a psychiatrist. She put on a white jacket and grabbed a stethoscope, and walked into my birth mother’s room.
‘She said, “I just want to make sure you want to give away your daughter.” She said she did. Mum was making sure that whatever happened, that there would be no recall of her new baby – me.’
She landed in South Golden Beach with her partner and family, and found her place and her people.
‘It’s home,’ she says. ‘It’s got that feeling of home.’
SGB was a refuge for single mothers
‘Back in those days (circa 1992) South Golden was a very sleepy little village which, being at the end of the Byron outskirts, was the refuge for single mothers and one-income families.
‘The store and the nearby Ocean Shores school provided the only fluctuation in activity. The best secret was that the “poor kids” had the best beach around’, she said.
When Norley moved in, she was about eight months pregnant, and within three days, she had joined the South Golden Beach Progress Association (now known as the South Golden Beach Community Association).
On the front line
Norley has been part of the group ever since, and has always been on the front line.
‘The biggest battle when I first arrived was locking in all of the areas around us so that the Gold Coast wouldn’t move down, and keeping the flood-plain free of fill’, she says.
‘Fern Beach is a prime example. Fern Beach went in with around 66,000 cubic metres of fill and now the rest of South Golden Beach floods higher.’
Norley and the association spent ten years lobbying for the Helen Street Bridge. They got the skate park sorted, and they outlived North Byron Parklands and Splendour in the Grass.
Norely warns that any future use of that land will impact the surrounds.
‘It is a flood catchment area, so anything that goes on there cannot affect what happens down here. That’s our big worry.’
For now, Norley who has been president for the association on and off for as long as she can remember, has her sights set on Council’s ‘Place Plan’.
‘We need maintenance – like fixing the Helen Street Bridge, like the Kolora Way Bridge, like the drainage, it goes on and on’.
Gentrified SGB
Norley, who has won awards, including Byron Council’s Senior Citizen of the Year award in 2022, says the challenge is that South Golden has become gentrified.
‘There was a McLaren (sports car) parked outside the New Brighton shop yesterday’, she said.
‘That’s what’s coming into our area. A lot of people have moved here because they love it, but now they want to change it!’
Norley sadly lost her partner, musician Michael Farmer, about six years ago.
It was a terrible shock to her and her family and the community. Since then, she has taken some time out and done some travelling and retired from her work as a Red Inc support worker.
She wants to slow the pace a bit. ‘I’ve burned out twice’.
‘But, I do love it – this is my home and it’s here my soul is happy,’ she adds.
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. 
