I don’t always agree with the expressed opinions of Mandy Nolan and I’m sure she would feel similarly, vice versa. But I do agree with what she wrote in The Echo recently about contemporary Byron Bay.
I think it’s inappropriate to dismiss her opinion as a ‘rant’, as a couple of letter writers have done in last week’s Echo [Jan 14]. That we live in a ferment of conflicting opinions and beliefs seems axiomatic.
I am not a ‘local’, but I have witnessed several decades of change here. I am hard-pressed to think of any for the better.
Byron Bay has been sold off to the highest bidders, and the ugly consequences are what we are face now.
I have noticed in wretched social media posts – where the ‘evil’ bots have twigged to my links with, and affection for, certain parts of Britain – St Ives, Cornwall, and the Cotswolds, to name two – the greed behind the constant ‘chocolate box’ views and saccharine sentiments posted on social media.
Many posts are not about intrinsic beauty or the ‘spirit of place’ – they are about selling real estate and doing business there; the quest for more visitors and tourist stays.
I have argued before that if it were not for the business interests involved , something might even be done to regulate and control the reckless and careless riding of e-bikes on the footpaths here (or any bicycles).
In a sonnet about the so-called Dark Lady, Shakespeare, in a maritime pun (on ships riding at anchor) of salacious innuendo, describes his mistress as the ‘bay where all men ride’. Byron Bay has become that.
Even if one were concerned with the business of tourism, one ought to realise that over-tourism and development degrades it. Who wants to be the Costa del Sol of the South Pacific?
Some may be keen on the idea, I suppose.
As Noel Coward once said of Monaco: ‘A sunny place for shady people.’
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. 
