I’ve been reading the very good letters over the last two weeks on the unfortunate stockpiling of Roundup in the USA destined for Australia.
There have been many letters over many years complaining of Byron Shire Council still spraying. Won’t they ever get the message? I fear for those young boys spraying along the river in Brunswick Heads, their shoes and clothes catching the green spray.
I have written many letters over a very long time, especially after Council gave permission for the beaches in Byron to be mined in early 1972/73 for the collection of rutile by the Department of Mineral Resources. There was also at the time much said about coastal erosion caused by the excessive damage to the whole of Tallow Beach, from Broken Head to Cosy Corner. Jonson Street was set up to process the sand and remove the rutile.
The ’80s saw a great deal of damage to Tallow Beach. So, after this, the sand miners planted bitou bush to regenerate the very soft sand now lacking the heavy metal rutile which had been removed. The bitou bush took off and supposedly held the sand together. By 1989 there was so much growth and every attempt to remove it failed, working bees were organised in Suffolk Park.
Byron Council finally resorted to spraying which was successful. In 2009 it was still being sprayed by another young man who was quite unaware that a cyclone was coming down the coast.
The wind was excessive, he was dressed in full white overalls, the spray going everywhere. My husband said to this young man, ‘You should not be doing this today’. He told my husband to get a job; my husband had been one of Byron’s first residential solicitors.
The young man continued to spray, the spray not only killed two nesting pheasants, but also the good surrounding vegetation. The spray caught my husband’s leg. I rang the works department of the Byron Shire Council, they said it was a mixture of Metsulfuron Methyl and Roundup. My husband died a very unfortunate death in 2012 at the age of 69.
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. 
