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 #30 TUESDAY, JANUARY 9, 2007 22,300 copies every week $1 at newsagents only
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Police deny unfair targeting of Straight Edge
No easy fix for youth tensions in Byron Shire Story & photo Lou Beaumont The youth of the Shire, and of Australia in general, seem to be getting some bad press at the moment. As it is with almost every profession, religion or generational group, a few bad eggs potentially means the whole basket is labelled rotten. As Tom Burrey, 20 years, from Straight Edge, a youth movement focusing on positive life choices puts it, ‘it’s a bit like ignorant people saying all Muslims are terrorists... just as not all kids with our image are Straight Edge.’ Straight Edge, for those of you as unfamiliar with youth dialect as I am, is a life choice, just as veganism or vegetarianism is a life choice. According to the Straight Edge crew, they are not a gang and they are not a cult. It has been a movement with momentum for around 25 years, since the arrival of hardcore on the
music scene. They decide not to buy into the negativity that surrounds so much of modern urban life. Their music preference is hardcore, with an image to suit, and according to Tom, they choose to abstain from violent behaviour, drinking, drugs and negative promiscuity. Many come to this choice to live consciously through prior negative experiences in their earlier childhood or teenage years. Others just come to see its positive influence through friends and choose to change their outlook. The Straight Edge crew want to set the record straight. They say they are being unfairly targeted and driven out of Byron by the police. The young men are asking how it is that the youth in the streets are able to receive a non-violent message when all they see is an
aggressive example. They believe it doesn’t make any sense. Tom said, ‘We just want to clear up the name of our lifestyle. Right now, anyone who has a vaguely hardcore image is being pulled aside and hassled. This is partly due to people using our name inappropriately. We’ve seen people involved in street fights claim to be Straight Edge when questioned by police because they know we are a non-violent group. ‘All this does is muddy our name, dilute our principles and blur the lines between the few people causing trouble and those who are trying to set a positive example. Now we are all being targeted.’ Bob Tate, 19 years and also Straight Edge, said, ‘We just want the to cops to know what’s really going on. We are
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M I C R O WAV E
If love could stop you dying…
Byron Bay identity Tony Narracott gets into training for his own wake. Photo Jeff Dawson
Mandy Nolan Have you ever been at a wake for someone you love and thought, damn, I wish they could have been here to see all these people and to hear how loved they were? It seems such a shame that a celebration for the ones we love happens when they are no longer here. It isn’t going to be that way for Tony Narracott. This continued on page 2 long time Byron Bay resident and high profile community member has embraced his diagnosis with inoperable lymphatic cancer with positivity and is planning one hell of a party, or as Tony calls it: ‘an Awakening.’ ‘I don’t mind dying. Everyone should experience this, I am lucky I have been given this warning. I don’t believe them for a minute, I am eating well, I have taken notice of what they have said and I have all these people popping around with their cures, so many people have survived cancer. At the moment I’m reading Detox or Die – it’s a great book!’ Tony has been deeply touched by the amount of Byron Bay residents Tom Burrey, left, and Bob Tate put their faces as covers to the book of the people who have reached out Straight Edge name in the hope of clearing their reputations.
to him once his diagnosis became public. ‘I have all these CDs and tapes – it’s the fact that they all mean so well, that’s what rubs off on you and makes you feel good. People go on and say we don’t have a community any more – but they’ve been coming down from the hills! ‘If love could stop you dying than I am going to live forever. It’s amazing the feeling I am getting since the announcement, it’s just an amazing feeling…’ ‘Barbara [Tony’s partner] thinks it might set off a trend where people host their own wake, as long as you have the good luck of being warned. I think I am privileged, the death the oncologist described is beautiful – you eat less and less, you sleep more and more and one day you don’t wake up, it’s not you that hurts, it’s the people you leave behind.’ Tony recalls the first time he came to Byron. It was love at first sight. ‘I came in ’72 originally… We went up Lighthouse Road and it was all shut up, they were all weekenders,
and I just fell for it, on that particular day.’ A life member of the Byron Bay Chamber of Commerce, Mr Narracott has been an invaluable community member who intends to give back to the town that he says has given him so much. Tony’s Awakening will be raising funds to go to a charity called the Tony Narracott Memorial sub-fund which operates under the auspice of the Northern Rivers Community Foundation. Tony intends the money to go to projects for the youth of Byron. Mr Narracott is in full support of a state of the art skatepark in Byron. ‘As residents in town we never had any problem with a skatepark. It should go up by the pool. ‘Up on the Butler Street reserve would have been a disaster. That’s a thing that I would love to see – The Tony Narracott Skate Park!’ Tony also spoke very highly of the Byron Youth Service and the work Paul Spooner has been doing there. He has continued on page 4