Echo staff and regular contributors
(or drudges in newspaper vernacular)
Aslan Shand
Editor
Aslan Shand is The Echo editor, including news, letters, and sports. Daughter of Echo co-founder Nicholas Shand, Aslan is a current shareholder. Aslan has worked at The Echo (this time around) since 2016, becoming editor of The Echo online in 2022, and editor The Echo newspaper in 2025, and is in charge of The Echo’s overall content.
Paul Bibby
Journalist
Paul Bibby is a journalist and avid council watcher working on both the digital and physical paper. Paul is a former Sydney Morning Herald journalist and has worked with The Echo since 2017.
Jeff Dawson
Photographer
Jeff Dawson is a director and shareholder of The Echo, employed since 1987 by evil forces to misdirect serious Echo management meetings with banter tangents, quips, and photo-babble.
‘I’ve been Jeff Dawson for more than 60 years, it’s probably too late to do anything about that now. I’ve surfed most of my life away. I’m been blessed to have a beautiful partner, good friends, a caring family, good health and an appreciation of irony. I harbour a healthy respect for the rules of anarchy. I disrespect Woolworths.
Being a part of The Byron Shire Echo is a source of much inspiration, pride, purpose, love, joy and creativity.’
Eve Jeffery
Journalist, photographer
Eve Jeffery is a photographer-journalist and The Echo entertainment editor. Apart from writing and taking photos, Eve has done almost every role at The Echo since she began working at the paper back in 2003.
Aka the Tree Faerie, Eve has been a writer and photographer since her teen years in Melbourne. Her background in theatre, dance, puppetry, television and probably one too many days as a vocalist in a rock band rehearsal room, have allowed her to view the entertainment industry from both sides – among other things she is also a vocal coach and filmmaker – she is one half of Cloudcatcher Media.
She is also a grandmother to two Italian Greyhounds…
David Lowe
Regular columnist
David Lowe is a filmmaker who writes news stories and political comment for The Echo in his spare time. You can catch his political comment every Monday in The Echo online.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning film-maker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and technology.
Lowe is known for his work with Cloudcatcher Media as a campaigner against unconventional gas and coal. He has also written history, screenplays and fiction.
Mandy Nolan
Regular columnist
Mandy Nolan has performed as a standup comedian for more than 20 years. During that time, she has worked alongside celebrities such as Whoopi Goldberg, Ertha Kit, and Bob Downe. Amid a full schedule of live acts, television and radio appearances, a weekly press column in The Echo and a comedy course (did we mention she also has five children?), Mandy also finds time to be an MC, presenter, and conference facilitator.
See Mandy’s Soapbox every week here in The Echo.
www.mandynolan.com.au
David Heilpern
Regular columnist
David Heilpern is a retired NSW magistrate and is now Dean of Law at Southern Cross University. David is passionate about legal education and has authored several law-related books, journal articles and reported judgments. He was the youngest magistrate in Australia, when appointed in 1998.
Simon Haslam
General manager
A white, slightly overweight man of Anglo-Saxon stock, Simon is happily married with a wife, two kids, and a mortgage. However, a principled refusal to own domestic animals (now abandoned), and a childhood diagnosis of myopia, have meant that Simon knows life on the fringes of Australian society.
When financial pressures forced him to give up work as a pancake cook, complete three university degrees and work as a commercial lawyer, Simon thought he had hit rock bottom. But then he got a job at The Echo. Ruthless in office politics, Simon has spent 30 of the best years of his life scrabbling up a slippery, rocky, sloping laddery thing and now holds the coveted position of general manager. He aspires to Australian average weekly earnings.
Ziggi Browning
Production manager
The work experience kid that never left. Ziggi started working for The Byron Shire Echo as a junior graphic designer fresh out of college back in 2001.
Production manager since 2005, he oversees the production of all Echo publications. Like the grease in a machine, Ziggi makes sure The Echo keeps ticking over smoothly.
Anna Coelho
Sales and Advertising Manager
After a 20-year career in the music industry, Anna decided to try a different kind of gig in 2019. Having grown up in the Northern Rivers and returned home after many years away, joining the long-established Echo team felt like the perfect fit. She started as a Sales Account Representative before stepping into the Sales and Advertising Manager role in 2022. Whether it’s wrangling media and marketing schedules, managing 30-piece bands, coordinating festival publicity or helping Byron Shire businesses and events shine, Anna’s still deciding which job requires the most juggling – but she’s getting pretty good at keeping all the moving parts in tune.
Echo world headquarters, Mullumbimby (Circa 2012).
Retired Drudges
Hans Lovejoy
Editor, Byron Shire Echo
In addition to his role as the editor of the Byron Shire Echo (2010–2026), Hans is an accomplished musician. A graduate of the Canberra School of Music, Hans has played the double bass and electric bass for more than 20 years, in all styles and at most of Australia’s premier festivals. See www.hanslovejoy.com for more.
Luis Feliu
Luis Feliu has worked as a journalist for more than four decades. He began his career as a cadet at The Canberra Times in the late 1970s, gaining experience across news, politics, courts, sport, finance, feature writing and editing, with a cadetship placement at The Sydney Morning Herald. He later worked for Australian Associated Press before joining the Australian Public Service as a journalist covering a range of federal portfolios.
After relocating to the NSW North Coast in the late 1980s, Luis spent almost 20 years as a reporter and sub-editor with the Daily News, before reporting for The Northern Star and The Echo. In 2008, he became founding editor of the Tweed Shire Echo, leading the award-winning community newspaper until its closure in 2011. He then joined Echonetdaily, where he continued reporting on news and issues across the Northern Rivers until 2018.
Michael McDonald
Editor, Byron Shire Echo
Michael McDonald joined The Echo crew in 1986 when he became the ‘overseas correspondent’ in Tasmania. Two years later he moved to Byron Shire and started covering local news. Since that time Michael reported on everything from local government to CWA cake stalls.
Michael was editor of The Byron Shire Echo from 1995 to 2010 and then handed over the reins to Hans Lovejoy. Now in retirement, his hobbies include chess, poultry, and tennis, not necessarily all at once.
Angela Harris
Angela Harris joined Echo Publications in 2009. Initially she joined the sales team as the Mullum sales rep, then from 2010 took on the role of sales manager.
Angela’s background has always been in sales and marketing. Her original training came in event and sponsorship management around the 18′ Skiff racing on Sydney Harbour. She has been a charter boat agency manager and real estate agent but before you judge her too harshly for that she quick to point that she also an enthusiastic consumer of single malt whisky and dark chocolate, so she can’t be all that bad.
John Campbell
John is a short-story writer and artist whose paintings have been hung in the Wynne, Sulman and Blake Prizes. He was The Echo’s movie reviewer and rugby league correspondent for many years after 2007, in which year he was nominated in the Australian Sports Commission Media Awards.
Darren Coyne
Darren is an experienced journalist who lives in Lismore. He worked previously for the Koori Mail, and started work as a journalist for The Echo in 2014.
S Sorrensen
S was a column writer for ten years with The Echo, his columns first published in the Northern Rivers Echo based in Lismore, where he worked as a journalist. After that newspaper was sold to APN, S wanted an independent newspaper to be home for his column. S is also a comedian, teacher of English, traveller, and lives in solar-powered shack tucked under wild cliffs north of Lismore.
Vale
Nicholas Shand
Founding Editor
Nicholas Shand founded The Brunswick Valley Echo, as the newspaper was first known, in 1986 as a civil rights watchdog to bring to light the heavy-handed policing of the valleys surrounding Mullumbimby which other media refused to cover.
Shand was born in London then brought up in the wild country in Wales, and he showed a temperament to match. Youthful enterprises included running an avant garde restaurant and skippering a yacht across the Atlantic. Eventually he took the hippie trail overland to Australia and in 1972 bought 81ha near the village of Mullumbimby, where he lived until his tragic passing in 1996.
www.echo.net.au/founding-editor
David Lovejoy
Co-founder
David Lovejoy arrived in Australia in 1971, after travelling overland (mostly) from England. He helped found The Echo in 1986 and has played many roles in the newspaper’s history. David was pivotal in keeping The Echo going after the sudden passing of founding editor, Nichola Shand. Under David’s leadership the paper continued to grow and prosper. After retirement, he continued to help The Echo behind the scenes, occasionally filling in for sick or holidaying staff in between attending chess tournaments. He has accumulated a son, a daughter, three grandchildren and three cats. In addition to countless Echo articles, David has written a memoir and two historical novels. See www.pelagius.com.au for more.
www.echo.net.au/2024/10/vale-echo-co-founder-david-lovejoy
Mungo MacCallum
Born in Sydney in 1941, our venerable political correspondent spent almost 20 years in the Canberra press gallery, where he worked for just about every press, radio and television outlet in the nation and a few overseas. He is most famous (or notorious) for his years with Nation Review, sometimes remembered as Australia’s first attempt at Gonzo journalism. He also covered several series of test cricket for the Australian Financial Review.
He moved to the north coast in 1988, where he indulged his other interests: body surfing, bushwalking, travel, gardening, theatre, sport and cooking. When not lunching, he was usually writing a book, 11 of which have been published. His partner is the videomaker Jenny Garrett; their annual St Mungo’s Day party became a local legend. Between them they have four daughters and two grandchildren.
Mungo denied that he is was more than semi-retired:
I once was an over-achiever
A true journalistic believer
But now I relax
With a phone and a fax
And a large curly-coated retriever.
(Actually the retriever has passed on, but there are other dogs.)
www.echo.net.au/2020/12/vale-mungo-maccallum
Chris Dobney
Chris Dobney began his journalism career in the 1980s as a theatre reviewer before unexpectedly becoming editor of Melbourne’s only gay newspaper during the height of the AIDS crisis. He later edited the national gay magazine OutRage and Sydney’s first weekly gay newspaper, Capital Q.
In 1997, Chris moved into digital publishing as the inaugural Sydney editor of Fairfax’s pioneering online events guide, CitySearch, eventually becoming its editorial director. Following CitySearch’s closure, he joined The Sydney Morning Herald as entertainment editor for smh.com.au.
After relocating to the Northern Rivers in 2007, Chris worked as an online editor for APN News before joining The Echo in 2011 as online news editor, a position he held until 2019.
Mary Gardner
Mary Gardner is a writer, biologist and photographer, who contributed articles about local ecology from 2007 until 2020. A PhD student of Southern Cross University, she researched the historical marine ecology of the subtropics, focusing on Byron Shire. Her special interest is the history of marine animals and people in this place over the past three hundred years.
