THE BYRON SHIRE ECHO Advertising & news enquiries: Mullumbimby 02 6684 1777 Byron Bay 02 6685 5222 Fax 02 6684 1719 editor@echo.net.au adcopy@echo.net.au http://www.echo.net.au VOLUME 21 #07 TUESDAY, JULY 25, 2006 22,300 copies every week $1 at newsagents only
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C O N D O N I N G
The Joy of Mud Mandy Nolan In a capitalist economy, scarcity and demand dictate value. After a very muddy Splendour in the Grass Festival last weekend shares in Wellingtons would have seen you rolling in it (cash that is, not mud!). Ironically, $20 rubber boots fetched the same price as a day ticket to the festival. Happiness is after all relative, and can be as simple as a good band and warm dry feet. Punters poured into Byron this weekend for a festival that kicked off six years ago at the Belongil Fields site. A ticket to the event has become more sought after than Osama Bin Laden, and with an increase in site capacity this year, the festival was able to welcome 17,500 revelers into its fold. However, that didn’t stop the odd fence jumper in giving it a shot. I was fortunate to witness an attempted jumping, which was quickly inter-
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Snoozing for a good cause
cepted by security: a bloke on a horse. It was like watching a scene from The Man from Snowy River. Audiences were wet but well behaved, savouring their Splendour and enjoying the diversity of performances on offer. It was marathon exorcisms at the Tent of Miracles, drumming, stick twirling and even crystal meditation at the Performance Stage. Saturday saw Sonic Youth close the event with a powerpacked show in the Super Top. While I enjoyed Avalanches, De Coder Ring, Clare Bowditch and others in the smaller venues, I had some trouble getting sound and vision in the Super Top. With increased capacity, those not up to submitting to the muddy crush found themselves some 50 metres back from the tent, struggling to hear. With increased size I felt that a screen may have helped, and if continued on page 2
Getting dressed for school last Friday for the children at Main Arm Upper Public School was a real breeze. They climbed straight out of bed, pulled on a coat and set off for school in their pyjamas. Each year the school raises funds for a local community group and this year it was the turn of the local Wildlife Rescue Service. Everyone felt the privilege of leaving school uniforms at home was worth at least a gold coin and the students raised over $55. In our photo teacher Michelle Stenner shows off her Ugg boots.
One storm could cause $100 million damage
Wolfmother in full cry. More of Jeff ‘Mudsux’ Dawson’s Splendour pictures on page 24.
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Lesley Patterson Just one severe storm could affect beach front property worth over $100 million according to the head of Australia’s first large scale investigation into the impact of severe storms and sea level rise on coastal New South Wales. Dr Rosh Ranasinghe from the Department of Natural Resources’s Coastal Unit will lead the study, which will bring together scientists from the University of Queensland and University of Sydney along with international expert Professor Magnus Larson from Lund University in Sweden. Coastal areas of NSW already experience several severe storms each decade which seriously threaten beach front properties. Dr Ranasinghe says that coastal erosion is likely to worsen, as global warming brings about an increase in the severity and frequency of
storms and told The Echo that property damage from one storm of $100 million was a conservative estimate. One of the main focusses of the study will be to model the importance of sand dunes in preventing coastal erosion and determine how storms erode sand dunes, something which has been lacking from many existing computer models. ‘We realised that the state of the art computer models do not adequately present the coastal dune processes,’ said Dr Ranasinghe. ‘Once developed, the model will be applied to selected sites along the NSW coastline to estimate likely coastal erosion and inundation caused by a range of historic and anticipated storm conditions,’ said Natural Resources Minister Ian Macdonald, whose department has funded the project.
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‘This research will help stem possible damage by providing new knowledge to inform effective coastal planning. There are concerns about the potential impact of climate change on our foreshores and this research will add to our knowledge,’ he added. Sea level rise is also expected to have an impact on coastal areas of NSW and Dr Ranasinghe said his team will be working from the United Nation’s estimates for rises of between 0.2 and 0.8 metres over the next 100 years. While the results of Dr Ranasinghe’s study are unlikely to be available until the end of 2007, Byron Shire Council’s coastline management plan is due by early next year. ‘We will have to take on board any information we can get from them [the Department of Natural continued on page 4
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