Comment
Byron’s coastal dilemma
In search of the perfect coffee Victoria Cosford
Bruce Thom
Byron Shire Council like all councils around the Australian coast where houses have been allowed to be built just behind the beach is confronted with a dilemma. These councils face the difficult task of planning for a future in which sea level rise and changing wave conditions may induce episodic retreat of the shoreline during storms. This is not a new phenomenon in Australia and elsewhere. Three options are used in coastal management to meet the sometimes conflicting interests of beachfront property owners under threat of erosion and the desire of communities to maintain a public beach. The options are to protect properties, to accommodate the impact with some form of building redesign, or to retreat and relocate. All options come with costs to the landowners, councils and from previous page
that rural subdivision applications below 40ha are always rejected, so what’s the point of applying? Secondly, rural landowners do not build extra accommodation to attract population; every TO LET ad in The Echo will result in 20 to 50 calls, depending on the season, and the following week there will be the same number of different people calling. Illegal rural dwellings then are clearly a response to demand, not a source of pressure which can be dealt with by
president of the Australian Coastal Society and was the chair of the NSW Coastal Council before it was disbanded.
What does a café do when its owners are considering changing their brand of coffee? Or when they are constantly plagued by coffee companies each pushing its own particular type? One solution is to invite a bunch of regulars to a coffeetasting – and recently Byron Bay’s Twisted Sista did precisely this. Sista Ginny told The Echo that ‘we’re hit by so many coffee companies all the time, so we just wanted to give them all a try.’ Three Sistas and seven regulars were given nine different types to try, a streamlined flow of milk-based samples sent out by expert barista Renee Glover. I – backed up by one other regular only – expressed the opinion that the tastings should be based on straight shots of espresso undiluted by milk but was shouted down by the Sistas on the grounds that if one was going to stand out it would regardless, and that most people drank milk-based coffees anyway. The upshot? Asked to give a score out of 10 I found myself cautiously bequeathing around 5 to 6 for most. None really distinguished itself although the aftertastes varied in bitterness. After a while one’s palate became inured, a little numb. The top three, however, proved to be
pretending that the need for affordable to live, the situation them isn’t there. Furthermore borders on the absurd. Again one suspects that holiday letting contributes to the shortage of supply. the Department is favouring sectional interests, taking the Socioeconomic lazy way out. Most rural land is not owned by developers cleansing? and therefore profits from ruIt’s one thing to make a se- ral subdivision would not go cret decision which says ‘we to those who make the ‘conwant more millionaires and tributions’. Rural subdivision, less dole bludgers and hip- furthermore, might reduce depies’ (that is, socio-economic mand for the land which those cleansing) but when such chappies do happen to own. decision pretends that those Can’t have that. millionaires won’t require Jan Barham and the Greens landscapers, cleaners, shop have been waiting for governassistants etc with somewhere ment authorities to give them
a ‘strategic’ approach which will let them off the hook in terms of what to do about illegal dwellings. However the Department’s ‘strategy’ on every issue including coastal erosion is ‘Your problem, not ours’ and to pour water on any proposed local solutions. The Greens ought to draw the obvious conclusion: they must either prosecute holiday letters or declare a moratorium on unauthorised dwellings too. Their present contradictory position favours the wealthier and better organised. These are not the people who voted for them.
the beach loving community. In places like New Jersey the decision to hard wall sections of the shore in front of expensive homes has resulted in the loss of the beach. This is on a coast with a rising sea level. To use a wall and then nourish the beach with sand from other sources as on the Gold Coast can be very successful but it is expensive and requires a massive tourist industry to be sustainable. We have known since the report of the Public Works Department in 1978 that the Belongil beach section of Byron Council is a problem yet landowners continue to rebuild, and very crude attempts have been made to protect existing properties such as dumping car bodies. Successive councils and state departments have grappled with the problem recognising the costs to the owners, the right of the public to have access to a beach, the consequences that
any hard structures at Belongil will have on shorefront land downdrift of the eroding section, and of course the costs of any major protective works similar to what has been undertaken at Noosa and on the Gold Coast. Australian society will in future be seeing more of the problem facing the different interests at Byron under climate change. Some difficult and costly decisions will have to be made if we are to hold onto our beaches in built-up areas. It is not a simple matter of just protecting property owner’s rights. It is also going to be a matter of protecting the rights of a community to have a beach. Byron’s dilemma will eventually be Australia’s dilemma. ■ Professor Bruce Thom is
Casa del Caffe (the winner), Vittoria then Genovese. I asked one of the Sistas if this meant they would change from the brand they have used for years, the ever-reliable, expertly expressed Lavazza. ‘We’ll probably stay with Lavazza’ was the reply. Besides, as another
Sista pointed out, ‘they say that it’s 50% the type of coffee used and 50% the person who makes it’ which guarantees a good coffee. (I buzzed wildly for about an hour after the tasting, earbashing the unfortunate friends I was dining with...)
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The Byron Shire Echo September 29, 2009 15