ALWAYS WAS, ALWAYS WILL BE The Byron Shire Echo • Volume 35 #22 • Wednesday, November 11, 2020 • www.echo.net.au
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Mia Armitage
Yindi and Caspar contribute to the tree of thoughts, prayers and hope at Sunday’s Day Of The Dead gathering at the Crystal Castle. Each year, Zenith Virago guides many through grief, toward honouring friends and family who are no longer with us. Photo Jeff ‘Shuffling Along The Mortal Coil’ Dawson
LşƱ ſĕƆĶōĶĕŕƐ ĶƆ ƐIJĕ IJĶſĕȜƆ ćĶīīĕƆƐ ĶŕĎƖƆƐſƷȃ Paul Bibby The number of visitors to the Byron Shire is not expected to return to pre-COVID levels for four years, and it could be a decade before international visitor numbers bounce back, a Council discussion paper says. But the paper also confirms that the tourism tide has now begun to turn, with visitors from within NSW leading the charge to our sunny shores. The information is contained in the Tourism Resilience Discussion
Kids’ plea for koalas – will right wing politicians listen? ▶ p6
Paper, released by Byron Council earlier this month, in response to the impacts of the pandemic on the Shire’s biggest industry. The paper complements Council’s draft Sustainable Visitation Strategy (SVS), which is on public exhibition until November 27. Council say in a media release, ‘The aim of the SVS is to support a visitor economy that cares for and respects local residents, protects the natural environment, celebrates cultural diversity and shares local values’.
Ballina and North Coast news ▶ p8
The discussion paper states that 2.41 million visitors came to the Shire last year, contributing $883 million to the local economy.
Worth $883m locally Over 90 per cent of these visitors were domestic, with 78 per cent being day visitors from South East Queensland (SEQ). However, when interstate borders closed and NSW went into lockdown earlier this year, ‘almost all domestic travel demand went into hibernation, along with large
Frazer’s take on a politically wounded 45th US prez ▶ p14
components of the economy’. ‘With the Queensland border restrictions, our domestic SEQ day visitors stopped coming and our local businesses that directly, and indirectly, support our tourism economy were hit hard,’ it says. Around 2,150 local jobs were lost and 60 per cent of workers went onto JobKeeper. Between April and June, businesses in the tourism industry experienced downturns of between 40 and 100 per cent, ▶ Continued on page 3
Sewage affecting the Belongil Estuary ▶ p18
A police officer accused of assaulting a 16-year-old in Byron Bay nearly three years ago faces trial in Lismore this week. Senior Constable Michial Luke Greenhalgh, 39, is alleged to have assaulted the boy as part of an arrest in Lateen Lane, sometime between two and three o’clock in the morning on January 11, 2018. Video footage of the arrest made national headlines, and was later used as evidence in a Law Enforcement Conduct Commission inquiry. The inquiry examined the actions of all four policemen involved in the arrest and ended with a recommendation for the Department of Public Prosecutions to consider charging one officer. Witness, Daniel Thomas, has described watching the boy earlier from an apartment overlooking Lateen Lane with his female partner, who would later film the final part of the arrest on her mobile phone. ‘He was calling out for help… asking for water,’ Mr Thomas told Lismore Court on Monday, via video link from Melbourne. Mr Thomas said the alleged victim, who cannot be legally named, was crying out that he ‘wanted the experience to end’ and was looking up at the sky a lot. Sen-Constable Greenhalgh is pleading not guilty to the one count of assault laid against him. The prosecution must prove the blows constituted unreasonable force.
▶ Full story at www.echo.net.au
Echo Property – going… going… gone! – to pages 33–40