We are proud to have Dave Hannan personally introduce his new film Coral Sea Dreaming in HD as a World Premiere on Saturday 2nd of May at Byron Bay’s Lounge Cinema – all part of the Saturday night Underwater Party at the Buddha Bar next door.
International media correspondents from prestigious dive magazine Scuba Diver Australasia are flying out a team from Singapore to cover the 2009 Byron Underwater Festival to be held in Byron Bay from Monday 27th April to Sunday 3rd May. With nearly $25,000 in prizes up for grabs, the Byron Underwater Photo and Video Shoot-Out is now the richest event of it’s type in Australia and offers one of the richest prize pools internationally.
It is almost impossible to parody the New Age and alternative lifestylers in Byron Bay because our ordinary daily existence is frequently so "far out" (to coin a psychedelic phrase still popular in this territory), that it defies exaggerated mimicry.
Attempts to parody our local tribes only comes across as comic overkill; satire sounds stagey or superfluous, because, let's face it, we Byronites are already right at the esoteric and entertaining edge of unconventionality.
Like many parts of Australia right now, the Byron Shire is experiencing its worst drought in many years. Recently, the local community organised a raindance ceremony in Mullumbimby. Various shire identities spoke to the public gathering and everyone participated in ceremonies and rituals led by Sol Farina. Below is the text of a talk I gave at the raindance. Forty-eight hours later, we did receive a generous but brief fall of rain. Coincidence? Read the text and decide for yourself.
When I first moved to Byron Bay, some city contemporaries thought I was copping out, dropping out or having a very premature midlife crisis.
In those days, it had not yet become hip to downscale, de-escalate and go back-to-nature, and Byron Bay had not yet reached its current apogee of fashionability for urban escapees.
At that time, happiness for masses of metropolites was, as Wallace Stevens wrote, "an acquisition."
The 2nd Byron Underwater Festival was a massive success. Sell out events and activities, glorious weather and calm seas made this an event to remember for everyone.
The 2008 Brunswick Valley Nature Festival will be all about conserving biodiversity in our unique natural environment. The theme “Birds, bugs and butterflies” will highlight the threat of climate change to the region’s biodiversity as increasing numbers of species face extinction, and just what that means for our future.
It is possible to fall as passionately in love with a place as with a person.
Both types of love affairs follow the same psychological lines of unfoldment. You set eyes on the intended. Sparks fly. Before you can say "Jack (or Jill) Robinson" or "Belongil Beach", you're smitten by the love object, who appears, initially to fulfill all your wildest dreams.
Near where I live is a ti-tree lake, known in local Aboriginal lore as the women's lake. It's believed that before white settlement the lake was frequented by the Indigenous women, the Arakwal clan of the Bunjalung nation. In particular, it's said that the pregnant women bathed in it because of the therapeutic properties of the ti-tree oil.
