Letters/Articles And of course the koala habitat which you so kindly mentioned. So Howie, come down from your bird’s eye view and experience the real thing, or stay up in your plane and fly away. Robbie Blick Byron Bay Q The
opening of last week’s letter vilifying the new Byron residents group is ‘dirty fighting’. Yuck. But I went along for ‘this quick plane ride’. I saw something different. I saw a town fitted into a problematic landscape, one prone to flooding from land and sea. I saw a buffer zone of regrowth in some wetlands surrounding the town and a partial buffer zone for subsections of beachfront infrastructure. I saw two waterways with infrastructure set in their floodplains. I saw little sign of stormwater works of a scale required for an existing township. As the ‘plane ride’ swept over the sea up to Noosa, I saw signs left over of recent heavy rains in the coastal waters. Heading north, I saw the highrise developments and the heavy modification of coastal areas. I then asked continued on page 16
Farewell to a larrikin journalist azine attracted 17 defamation writs from the rich and famous, some of them as a result of Brouwer’s very dry sense of humour and his dislike of hypocrisy. Stephen spent most of his adult life moving between the hippy and the political capitals of Australia. In his later years he published the very successful Gardening on the North Coast and Thereabouts, with illustrations by Mullumbimby artist Geoff Williams.
STEPHEN BROUWER 1949–2014 Robbie Swan
O
ne of Canberra’s well known political press gallery larrikins from the 70s and 80s, and a north coast author and character, has passed away. Stephen Brouwer was an olderstyle journalist and from an era when journalists didn’t need a degree to get a job. He was an inveigler and a softlyspoken arm-twister who had a penchant for introducing journalists and lobbyists to clients around Parliament House. As with other Canberra reporters, many of his assignments seemed to require hours of research in the nonMembers’ bar. Born in Goulburn in 1949, he spent his early life on a farm. Rebellious and charming at the same time, he fell in love with journalism as a cadet on the Goulburn Evening Post. He was quickly promoted and, when military conscription arrived in Australia in the late 1960s, he easily dodged the draft by flying across the ditch and getting a job with the New Zealand Broadcasting Commission. He always joked that that was where they taught him to speak ‘the Queen’s English’. On returning, he worked at Syd-
A dreamer at heart, he had recently bought a beautiful but extremely impractical piece of land in Palmwoods where he lived his final years, expanding his gardening books, walking in the forests and living off the land. His last project was editing an autobiography of Canberra Art Gallery identity Joy Warren. He is survived by his three children, Jade, Alia and Sam and two grandchildren, Lilli and Daniel.
Stephen Brouwer and the alternative press
ney radio 2SM for a while and wrote for Playboy magazine before moving back to Canberra and working for the ABC in the Press Gallery. He became an influential reporter during the Whitlam years and later worked for TIME magazine. In the 1970s Stephen made his home on the north coast and got involved with the alternative press [see panel]. He was a longtime campaigner for the legalisation of marijuana and in the early 1980s was prosecuted and sent to jail for a short time for his beliefs. In the mid 1980s he was associate editor of Canberra’s national political satire magazine, Matilda. The mag-
Stephen was involved with north coast alternative publishing in the 1970s. Among other projects, he self-published and edited The Message of Terania in 1979 following the rainforest protests. According to Dropping in, not out: the evolution of the alternative press in Byron Shire 1970–2001, by Fiona Martin and Rhonda Ellis, Peter Rowan created The East Coast Times in 1980: ‘He was joined by Gloria Searle, who operated the first computer-typesetting machine in Mullumbimby, Gloria’s husband Bill, a writer, Stephen Brouwer, a progressive journalist from the Canberra press gallery, and graphic artist Geoff Williams. ‘The Times, dubbed by many in the still conservative population “that hippie newspaper”, began
with well-written, forceful features defending the natural environment and the cultural values of the alternative community. When Rowan, driven by a need to secure mainstream advertising, insisted that members of the creative collective curb their demands for editorial freedom, they shunted him. But their coup was followed by an advertising drought and they lost interest. Rowan returned, and rebuilt the advertising base with the introduction of page three bikini girls, local historical articles and advertorials, before shutting the paper down in mid 1981.’ Read more about the rise of the north coast alternative press at www.transformationsjournal.org/ journal/issue_02/pdf/MartinEllis. pdf.
The Easter Bunny will be making a special appearance at BYRON FARMERS MARKET on
Thursday April 10th from 8:30–10am • Special surprise for all the kids! • free parking • all welcome • live entertainment • kids entertainment • great local produce
Byron Farmers Market | Butler Street Reserve, Byron Bay North Coast news daily: www.echonetdaily.net.au
The Byron Shire Echo April 8, 2014 15