Sustainable Land Use?

Tyagarah Sustainable Community Alliance

In 1999 the Byron Flora and Fauna study identified the Tyagarah area as:
* "An integral part of the coastal vegetation wildlife corridor" and
* "An area of High Ecological Significance, containing core native vegetation."

Sounds like a silly place to put a 5 day music festival and 50,000 plus people.

But wait, theres more. The developers are not planning on using the site for only 5 days per year. they could host up to 20 (maybe more) events per year. I wonder what the wildlife (animals, not drunk and stoned youth) will think.

Here's a toon

Site Details

A map showing the site that Noble & Chugg (bluesfest) want to develop.
Click it to or view the whole map on a new page.

Lets be clear! The proposed site borders a national park, contains high conservation value flora, and is smack in the middle of a wildlife coridoor.

Oh, and it floods. Sometimes 3 times per year. Dont give me any "ooh but its a local event" rubbish either. Having Coca Cola commercials beaming out at me from multiple bigscreens in between acts at the popfest is not a "unique Byron event". Take it to the Goldcoast or the Woodford site!

The Proposed Site!!

The Picture of the new bluesfest site that offended Bluesfest Inc so much that they have threatened legal action, and have removed any suggestion of site criticism from their bulletin board. The moderator is careful to leave comments supporting the site.

Click the pic for the big picture.

Bluesfest: Roots and Leaves!

Peter Noble, organiser of the Blues and Roots Festival, says change is afoot for the event.

Is the bluesfest leaving its roots? With Coca Cola ads blasting the site from multiple screens, and many punters munching on pluto pups and hot chips, it would appear so.

Surely the Gold coast is more appropriate for an event of this style?

Add to this the heavy handed deletion of unfavourable coments from its bulletin board, and the banning of posters it would seem like the glory days are gone for all but the "true believers"

Do you agree?

Bluesfest ready to leave behind its teenage years - Lismore Northern Star - Mar 31 2007 8:00AM – localnews

Bluesfest ready to leave behind its teenage years

31.03.2007

By Jamie Brown

BYRON’S Bluesfest has come a long way since it grew out of the Piggery and moved to the Red Devils’ home ground. And the man behind the main event, Peter Noble, says it has a long way to go before it does its dash. But whether it will always be a fully blues-orientated event is a moot point, says the talented and worldly promoter. “Like any event you need to crawl before you can walk and then you need to develop your faculties,” the self-confessed ‘aging hippy’ noted. “The Byron Bluesfest is almost out of its teenage years now and we still have a long way to grow.” But a straight diet of blues is a bit like bacon and eggs for breakfast every day.

“I like bacon and eggs, but not all the time. After a while I want muesli,” Mr Noble mused. “There is a world of music out there, a world of quality music. And the right music makes a better world.” This is where Peter Noble’s Bluesfest is headed, along with his related blues fests in Fremantle, Point Nepean, Durban and Singapore: They are about people with a message who play music at the highest level. “Blues is a part of this, but it is not everything,” he says. “ I am not going to be kept in a ‘blues’ pigeon hole.”

The Peter Noble and Jan Barham Show

Brought to you by coca cola and jim beam.

Read on for the article from the Northern Star.





20.01.2007

By HEATH GILMORE





New location has to be big and close to festival’s home base of Byron Bay


PETER NOBLE has big plans for the East Coast Blues and Roots Festival — a 121 hectare site only 15 minutes away from downtown Byron Bay.

The Bluesfest supremo is again scouting for a local site after passing up an opportunity to buy a Yelgun land holding, or possibly move even further north.

This opportunity was taken up by the Splendour in the Grass promoters, who lodged a development application for the Yelgun site this year.

Buoyed by the reaction to this year’s Bluesfest line-up, the promoter agreed to a wideranging interview about his dream for a 121-hectare site, love for his dead best friend’s wife and an unlikely business relationship with the late gangster rapper Tupac.

Mr Noble, who had mooted the possibility of moving Bluesfest outside the area, revealed for the first time that a heartfelt lunch with Byron mayor Jan Barham convinced him to stay put.

"We decided not to go ahead with the Yelgun site that the Splendour people bought. We pulled out of negotiations on it, and partially the reason is because I sat down and had a coffee with Jan Barham," he said.



"She said, ‘Peter, please don’t leave Byron, you are the iconic event here. You mean a lot to our town. We don’t mind you being 15 minutes away, just don’t be 30 minutes outside town. Then it’s not Byron any more.



"And her point was strong. And I said, ‘Gee, I hope you were not the only one to support that’."



Mr Noble said he wanted a big enough site for five stages, camping and increased comfort for patrons.



He said this area would be developed to minimise its carbon footprint in the region and maximise the use of solar power, recycled water and composting toilets.



"There is something else about the event for the town, the majority of the town, because there are detractors, they are proud of it. A little town, Byron Bay, is the centre of this huge music festival.



"My search for a site around Byron is pretty well documented. Once we get the right site we will turn it into a real festi- val. It’s got to be on a big enough site with all the questions answered for traffic management and sound levels.



"Who knows where it’s going to go. But I know we are going to be on our own site in five years."



Mayor Jan Barham said her lunch with Mr Noble after the 2006 event was a ‘post-mortem’ to follow up on new measures to control traffic, noise and crowd behaviour at Red Devil park.



She said the festival had become the icon for Byron Bay’s cultural identity, however, few viable sites remained that could be developed as proposed by Mr Noble.