A crash on the Pacific Motorway heading north from the Byron Shire on Monday morning reduced traffic to a single lane around 11am.

A century and a half ago, the visionary Henry David Thoreau declared people had become ‘the tool of their tools.’  In this device-driven age of smartphones, social media, and artificial intelligence, few observations could be seen as more prescient. 

I feel trapped. There isn’t a single time I attend where I don’t check my proximity to the exits, or imagine what I’d do if there was a fire, or worse, a shooter. The sense of being enclosed is unnatural, I can’t tell what time of day it is, I lose my sense of direction. It’s designed to be disorienting. It feels otherworldly. And never in a good way. They are designed to make you stay longer. They are by design, disorienting.

The recent and continuing rains have turned many of our roads into a sodden mud puddle and the NSW Farmers have renewed calls for real action on road infrastructure funding after continual damage on roads and bridges across the state.

More than five thousand native plants are to be planted along Brunswick River banks in Mullumbimby.