THE BYRON SHIRE
NEW REAL ESTATE LIFTOUT
Volume 29 #36 Wednesday, February 18, 2015 Phone 02 6684 1777 Fax 02 6684 1719 editor@echo.net.au adcopy@echo.net.au www.echo.net.au 23,200 copies every week
PROPERTY CAB AUDIT
Inside this week
SOAKING UP SPILLS SINCE LAST CENTURY
It’s all Naked and Ruddock loses Acid messiah’s The beat goes about YOU on in Seven pedalling his crack last trip – p16 – p7 – p21–28 – p8 – p15
Women celebrate V-Day at Main Beach Story & photo Eve Jeffery
Calling on all women everywhere to ‘dance’ and ‘rise’, Alba Navas and the Byron Bay V-Day crew moved to the beat of the February 14 anthem Break the Chain as the sun rose over Main Beach on Saturday.
Following their sold-out performance of The Vagina Monologues in 2014, V-Day Byron Bay hosted the 2015 V-Day Women’s Festival at Bangalow A&I Hall. On Friday the group began the Valentines weekend of festivities with a reading of
Ensler’s award-winning play alongside a fundraising for the Byron Girls Group and Assist-A-Sista, a Gold Coast-based group of community volunteers who help survivors of domestic violence. A large group of enthusiastic
Youth service struggles with funding cuts It’s no secret that the Byron Youth Service is struggling after government cuts and reallocation of grants away from the Byron Shire. Former director of the service and current Labor state candidate Paul Spooner feels that the problem goes deeper than funds management.
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Bruns plans anger locals Plans to start work after Easter on a major and controversial makeover of popular foreshore parks at picturesque Brunswick Heads has sparked a rallying call by residents angered at not being properly consulted about the changes. The state-government-approved upgrades include reducing a swathe of green space at Torakina Reserve to make way for a new 18-space car park and an access road inside it, as well as building a foreshore walkway there. At Banner Park opposite the local pub, a huge 400-square-metre raised timber deck including fencing and picnic tables will be built along the river foreshore, and the existing playground will be upgraded and enlarged.
Rising in revolution
Eve Jeffery
Byron Shire Council Notices
Luis Feliu
It is estimated that one in three women across the planet will be beaten or raped during their lifetime. With the current world population that is one billion women who will suffer by someone else’s hand. February 14, which for about 200 years has been celebrated as the modern version of Valentines Day, is now becoming known as Vagina (Monologues) Day or V-Day, a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls, inspired by Eve Ensler’s play, The Vagina Monologues.
The event now travels hand-inhand with One Billion Rising, a campaign of actions to end violence against women, launched on Valentines Day 2012. This year the event focused on ‘Rising in Revolution’, an escalation of the first two stages; previous years were ‘Rising in Defiance’ and ‘Rising in Justice’. Across the northern rivers V-Day celebrations and One Billion Rising actions were held over the weekend as women, children and men showed their support for the safety of women.
SEE CENTRE PAGES
‘The current federal and state government is hellbent on destroying small, local community-based organisations like BYS’, says Mr Spooner. ‘Their main focus is cost cutting and not ensuring quality program delivery and services to disadvantaged young people. ‘This is the logical result of cutting public service positions. The government needs to rationalise
services because they don’t have the employees to manage funded programs so their preference is to fund large regional and national organisations.’ The Links to Learning program is one of the main projects lost, which will see youth at risk of leaving school or missing the chance to enter the workforce successfully. continued on page 2
flash mobbers gathered at Main Beach in Byron Bay at sunrise on Saturday to dance and sing and swim. The crowd, sporting a multitude of red hues, were read and sung to by organisers Zenith Virago, Jenni Cargill-Strong and Ilona Harker. A quick choreography lesson to the V-Day song Break The Chain followed before a performance on the beach. The dance then melded into a swim. The celebrations continued on Saturday at the A&I Hall with free workshops for the community, including free yoga and self-defence classes followed by a women’s film festival. Q See Sharon Shostak’s video at
– echo.net.au/women-rise-dance
banking
Development fears Six of the historic Norfolk Island pines there will be incorporated into the deck, with river steps replaced, but an old gum tree, which residents had fought to prevent being chopped down by park managers before, is now doomed again and set to be cut down to make way for the bigger playground. A new network of pathways and lighting is also planned for all the foreshore parklands, but the progress association says no details or specifications have been given of what type of path surface or style of lighting are to be used. While some will welcome upgrades to amenities in the parklands, others fear Gold Coast-style overdevelopment will replace the natural charm of the seaside holiday village with its popular open green continued on page 3