Lovely Delvene co- owns The Beach Hotel at Byron Bay.
The feature travel story in the Taipei Times (see below for address) is accurate. The pictures could have been better though.
My friend Bob Beale is mentioned as a ranger handing out a $300 ticket (fine) for someone sleeping in the car overnight. That’s a huge fine. Probably in a National Park area.
Byron Bay began ‘going to the pack’ twenty years ago. It changed from a sleepy coastal town with hippies into an international back backing destination with prices to match.
Then new council rules, parking meters and hoards of young international tourists.
Locals were resisting a McDonald’s coming to town at one stage.
Probably about the time The Beach Hotel was constructed the big changes began in the late 1980′s. (Similar change occurred simultaneously at Cairns in North Queensland).
Sydney city changed with the 2000 Olympics. Prices went up 20% everywhere – and remained there.
The girl shown with an ice cream (in the old main street of Byron Bay) is Delvene Delaney, a former TV model-actor. Her husband co-produced three internationally successful Crocodile Dundee movies and directed the worst two of them.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2010/02/27/2003466768
Bob Beale of Byron Bay says:
Yes, the iron hand of Environmental Management protects the East Cape of the Australian Mainland, ‘they may crap on the town itself but not on my patch, no prisoners’. Hell mate, i knew i was known in Byron, Big at Bangalow an icon at Ocean Shores but, Terrible in Taipei when will it end. Its still just me mate, Father of the six, Grandfather of the nine, Mate of many, guzzler of the V.B. and as some call me “The Keeper of the Cape”. Must chat with you in person soon mate, got some good tales to tell.
Cheers Bob
