Mitra Ardron, Byron resident and member of the Tyagarah Sustainable Community Alliance, writes:
Byron Bay forged its image as an alternative community hosting
intimate, quirky events, including the East Coast Blues and Roots
Festival, first held in a converted piggery before a few hundred stoned
hippies.
Last weekend’s version drew 15,000 punters and was
sponsored by Bundaberg Rum, Coca Cola, Jim Beam and Toohey’s. Between
acts, big screen ads intruded on conversations and local charities are
finding they no longer get the support from the event they used to. As
one festival worker said, ‘it’s just become too big and too corporate’.
But
not big enough, apparently. It’s rumoured that the promoter, Peter
Noble and partners, have paid a deposit on a new flood-prone site 10km
north of town. Plans are reputedly for five or six events a year,
audiences of 30,000 plus, a 24-hour liquor licence and, to snare a
larger share of total visitor spending, onsite camping.
The Blues
Festival trades on Byron Bay’s alternative reputation but in reality
it’s become Party HQ for kids too old for Schoolies. Holidaying
families are much less in evidence than they were a few years’ back
while locals, after battles with Club Med, Becton and Mcdonald’s, are
manning the barricades once more. The festival captures the paradox
faced by many country towns: how to prosper without losing what makes
the town special in the first place.
Local residents are again
asking themselves that question, and not just in Byron Bay. Sandwiched
either side of the proposed new site sit two of the area’s few
remaining alternative communities. Arising from the aftermath of
Nimbin’s Aquarius Festival of 1973, these residents must think last
weekend’s Blues Fest was from another planet. At the Bundy Marquee, for
example, you could "get your photograph taken with the Bundy girls"
while the Jim Beam Party Crew roamed around looking for drinkers "to
reward with a free photo invitation".
The Aquarius Festival
celebrated a "dawning of the consciousness and protest movements",
which in the past has been the defining character of Byron Bay. It
seems this year’s festival holds slightly different values: like being
unconscious and prostrate.
