THE BYRON SHIRE
Mothers Day
Volume 29 #45 Wednesday, April 29, 2015 www.echo.net.au Phone 02 6684 1777 Fax 02 6684 1719 editor@echo.net.au adcopy@echo.net.au 23,200 copies every week
CAB AUDIT
D ATA I S N ’ T I N F O R M AT I O N , I N F O R M AT I O N I S N ’ T KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWLEDGE ISN’T WISDOM
Inside Mungo: Hunt’s Letters of Nimbin Best kept Good Taste Gigs – we list this spin lost in war complaint and MardiGrass secrets around the all of them week memories – p8 praise – p9 – p12,13 – p14,15 shire – p20, 21 – p27
Cosy Corner could be ‘sacrificed’ for Belongil
Love the mums Pages 16–19 Byron Shire Council Notices Page 37
One hundred years
The plans to suck sand from Tallow to Belongil Chris Dobney
Council’s plans are becoming clearer regarding its effort to mitigate the potential loss of sand resulting from its rock wall projects at Belongil. The Echo understands that sand will be extracted and pumped from Tallow Beach via national park land onto Clarkes Beach, and then hauled to Belongil. Known as a ‘sand nourishment program’, the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) say it will be necessary to offset the likely erosion of Belongil Beach as the result of the construction of a rock wall. By comparison, a similar scheme at Noosa cost more than $2 million to construct and has annual operating costs of more than $300,000. A UNSW study has estimated similar construction costs for the Byron project, but with higher ongoing costs, estimated at around $500,000 a year. And while the OEH had threatened Council with not allowing the construction of rock walls at Belongil without a sand nourishment scheme being in place, it appears the minister has intervened on behalf of affected landowners. Former NSW environment minister Rob Stokes (Liberal) overruled the OEH to allow Council to go ahead with the rock wall as long as the sand nourishment plan was subsequently implemented. In a letter to Byron Shire Council on February 20 this year, OEH wrote, ‘While the minister is keen to ensure the sand transfer system remains a key element of the coastal
zone management plan’s (CZMP) adaptive management approach, he has listened to resident concerns and would permit the seawall component to be constructed prior to the sand transfer scheme in order to alleviate the threat to the properties.’ Under the plan, The Echo understands, there would be a deep well dug in Tallow Beach into which sand would wash, then be sucked out as a wet slurry and lifted by pumping a short distance to a nearby main pump house. From there it would be pumped in a pipeline, probably in road reserves, to a discharge point upstream of the areas of depletion.
Tweed experience But retired civil engineer Andy Winton-Brown, who worked on a similar sand nourishment project on the Tweed coast, says that type of project yields mixed results. ‘It’s been a great success at the northern end beaches [such as Kirra], but it’s denuded the northern end of Fingal,’ he told The Echo. ‘My personal view is that Tallow Beach is a popular surfing beach. So if you had a system there withdrawing sand at Cosy Corner it would be robbing Peter to pay Paul. ‘We’re taking from the many to give to a few,’ he added, referring to the small number of landowners who live behind beaches that would be replenished by the sand. Mr Winton-Brown said that when his family first moved to the area 30 years ago ‘we used to go surfing at Cosy Corner. continued on page 2
Saturday’s Anzac Day 100-year commemoration was perhaps the biggest ever, with communities turning out and supporting all service men and women, both past and present. WWII veteran Richard Mayne joined the parade after the Brunswick Heads dawn service. Photo Jeff Dawson Luis Feliu
While the Anzac Day centenary was remembered across the nation and Byron Shire, the dawn service on Saturday at the Brunswick Heads Cenotaph was marked by a special ceremonial placement of crosses by local primary school children. Students from Brunswick Heads, Ocean Shores and The Pocket schools decorated the small crosses and rehearsed for the occasion on Friday, when they had also held a ceremonial watering of the town’s historic memorial pine trees in the Terrace Reserve, followed by a tree planting.
The watering ceremony for the coastal cypress pines at The Terrace was led by one of the original ‘water boys’, former Brunswick Heads Public School student, 84-year-old D’Arcy O’Meara, who helped water, replant and look after the pine trees as a child. Mr O’Meara, who travelled from Brisbane for the occasion on Friday, told the students the moving story of the pine trees planted in memory of locals killed in both world wars.
Terrace significance His grandchildren were part of the group watering the trees, the first of which were planted 100 years ago.
Mr O’Meara also spoke about the significance of the Terrace park to both Aboriginals and Whites, the middens and the trees’ history. He said that as a young student at the school, he and the other kids were tasked with carrying buckets of water a good distance to keep the young pines growing as a living memorial. The laying of the crosses at the cenotaph was a community effort, according to president of Mullumbimby Rotary, Helen Carpenter, who told The Echo the club organised for the small white crosses to be made by volunteers from the Mullumbimby Men’s Shed and decorated by the schoolchildren.