21st annual Byron Bay Blues Festival is on over the Easter long weekend, 1-5 April 2010 at their new festival site in Tyagarah (10 mins north of Byron Bay).
Early bird tickets are on sale now, visit; www.bluesfest.com.au
Once you decide to come to the festival, don’t waste anytime booking your accommodation.
If you want to research and book your accommodation, visit; www.byron-bay.com
If you want the help of a booking service, visit; www.byronstyle.com.au
P.S. I’ve published an up to date list of BluesFest Accommodation.
Tags: blues festival
The Mullum Music Festival dates are 26-29 November 2009 (only 2 months away). The four day festival boasts 8 venues, 50 acts & workshops. The posters are all over Byron Shire, I like it - so I’ve included a screen shot to give you all an idea what it looks like.
This years acts include; Tex Perkins, Simone White (USA), Archie Roach & Shane Howard, Jordie Lane, Jen Cloher and The Endless Sea, Mamadou Diabate, Bobby Singh and Jeff Lang, Washington, Leah Flanagan Band, Vince Jones & Band, and many more.
They are selling a limited number of early bird tickets now. For more information &/or to purchase tickets visit; www.mullummusicfestival.com
Tags: festivals, mullumbimby
Like Sydney & Brisbane, we got the dust. My photo of South Golden Beach north of Byron Bay doesn’t look as red as other images of the dust storm - but errie just the same.
This year, Big Scrub Rainforest Day is being held on Sunday 20th September in the heart of Bangalow at the Bangalow Showground. This year’s theme is “All about the Big Scrub”.
The day will commence in the A&I Hall at 10am with a Welcome to Country and Official Opening, followed by a talk from keynote speaker Dr Mary E White AM, author of “Greening of Gondwana”.
Presentation and workshops will cover a wide range of topics from “Big Scrub Bats” to “Living on the land for beginners”.
Every hour from 10am, buses will leave for walks led by experts in the Booyong Flora Reserve, offering opportunities to experience the magnificent biodiversity of the Big Scrub Rainforest.
A free boomerang bus service will be available on the day at 9.30am, 10.30am and 11.30am, leaving from Byron Bay Visitors Centre in Jonson Street. The service will return from Bangalow Showground at 3.30pm. To book please call Mark on 0429 461 342. There will also be parking available for a $2 donation, proceeds going to Big Scrub restoration.
You can learn more &/or download a program at their website: www.rainforestrescue.org.au
Tags: Add new tag, rainforest
I really wanted to ensure my blog was kept up to date with regular posts - alas, it wasn’t to be… 2 weeks since my last entry.
It’s not for lack of things happening - it’s actually that there is too much happening. Here’s a rundown to get you up to date.
Visitor Information
From time to time, Ross & Eva send me their up to date ‘Local Trail’ info - an accurate list of the regions Old Wares, Antique, Collectable, Emporiums and Secondhand Stores. You can keep up to date via their blog; heathsoldwarescollectables.blogspot.com
There’s also a new exhibition at the Art Piece Gallery in Mullumbimby called ‘About a Tree’, you can learn more at their website; www.artpiecegallery.com.au
Business
I will be able to share some big news about our Byron Bay based businesses in the near future, I can also tell you we are in the process of installing a new phone system for Byron Bay Accommodation PTY LTD, which will combine VoIP with land lines and give our staff more flexability as to where they work from.
I can also tell you we’ve recovered from our web server crash late last month. We were able to restore just about everything - but we did have to re-build our ‘map view’ feature from scratch. Have a look; www.byronstyle.com.au/maps/
Industry News
Many people would be aware that Byron Shire Council has been trying to limit the number of holiday houses in Byron Bay for the past few years. I will provide details in a future post - in a nutshell, Council included a few Holiday Letting ‘precincts’ in their draft LEP and the State Govt has told them they cannot.
Well, that’s the Byron Bay highlights from the last 2 weeks. I will post more regularly in the future.
The 11th annual Summersong Music Camp will take place Jan 15 - 22nd, 2010 at Lake Ainsworth Sport & Rec Centre in Lennox Head, NSW. Serving those ages 17 and up seeking an intensive music holiday camp alongside the ocean and the ti tree lake in the midst of summer, Summersong has been a career catalyst and music community creator since its inception.
The faculty this year will be Tony Backhouse, Kristina Olsen, Mal Webb, Karl Farren, Fumi Yamamoto, Elliott Orr, Josie Kukukulie and Luciano Mesiti, with a few special guests. Daily classes include two levels of Songwriting, Vocal Explorations, A Cappella, Guitar, Guitar Accompaniment for Songwriters, Band Lab, Jamming, African Dance, African Percussion, and more. Evening activities include student and faculty concerts, jams, parties, games, song circles, and more.
Participants can reside on or off site. There are two levels of Partial Youth Scholarships available this year.
For futher info visit: www.summersongmusiccamp.com
PS - I grabbed Malcolm’s photo off their website - Thanks.
Tags: lennox head
Yesterday one of our webservers crashed.
23 of our websites went down - 22 were restored within hours.
Our biggest site on this server, www.byronstyle.com.au, was unable to be restored as all the backup files were corrupted!
Our excellent staff were able to continue to take bookings (using paper and pens) while our booking system was fixed. All our customers and suppliers were very understanding.
We had fairly recent copies of all content - at this stage the only thing not yet working is our ‘browse on maps’ feature - it should be rebuilt by tomorrow.
We WILL be more careful with our backup files in the future.
PS. I should add that since 1997 we’ve published / managed 60-70 websites and this is our first server crash.
Tags: byron bay accommodation
I didn’t get to the Writers Festival this year - but I know the weather was great… Here’s the overview;
As the Byron Bay Writers Festival 2009 takes its place in our memories, organisers extend a heartfelt thank you to sponsors, volunteers, audiences and, of course, the wonderful writers.
Byron Bay showed its most beautiful, sunniest face and the warm words and hot topics were matched with golden August sunshine and intensely blue skies. Audiences lingered to examine the sculpture garden created by Dev Lengjel using the work of local artists and the Art Piece Gallery tent was well patronised, with selected works dressing the marquee stages. The trees were festooned with feathery lovers of literature and sessions were punctuated by the cawing of crows and warbling of magpies.
The Belongil Fields site coped extremely well with the village of marquees and thanks are due to the Splendour in the Grass team who donated truckloads of wood chip to compensate for the lack of afore mentioned grass. Many bemoaned the loss of the lake and grassy knolls that graced our previous Byron Bay Writers Festival location, but once inside the marquees, the feast of panels, conversations and readings was richer than ever.
Highlights? Well the biggest crowds were drawn by Friday’s Opening Address with Geoffrey Robertson holding the audience for an hour without reference to notes, and Saturday’s Statute of Liberty Conversation in which Geoffrey was joined by Kerry O’Brien. Hugely successful was the Ain’t ‘alf hot panel with Cheryl Kernot, Ian Lowe and Anne Summers while numbers for Before Underbelly, joining ex undercover cops Domenico Cacciola and Colin McLaren with Kerry O’Brien, were astronomical. Sides were definitely splitting in Sunday’s Well it cracked me up, where Chair Simon Marnie was floored by the combination of Imran Ahmad, Michael Cathcart, Tom Gleeson and the divine Denise Scott, who captivated listeners everywhere she appeared. For all who were fortunate enough to hear it, Robert Dessaix’s Thea Astley lecture was the triumph of the Festival and his words still resonate deeply in hearts and minds. This was surely the greatest literary moment of the program.
The office that never sleeps is busily wrapping up the accounting and operations of the Byron Bay Writers Festival 2009. Rest assured the program for 2010 is never far from our minds and expect to find dates and venue on the Festival website in the near future.
Be sure to visit their website; www.byronbaywritersfestival.com.au
Tags: Byron Bay, writers festival
Byron Bay and surrounds play host to many festivals and events each year - the three ‘big’ ones being; Byron Bay Blues Festival, Splendour in the Grass, and Byron Bay Writers Festival.
The Blues Festival started at the Arts Factory, and moved to the football grounds and more recently to Belongil Fields. A couple years ago the Blues Festival organisers bought a property in Tyagrah to make their own permanent festival site. They are seeking approval now - but are facing many objections from local residence and various groups concerned for the environment.
Splendour in the Grass which is held at Belongil Fields, purchased a property in Yelgun and have sought approval for a trail event for the past couple of years.
The Byron Bay Writers Festival was hosted at the Byron Bay Beach Resort, when Becton purchased the Beach Resort site for their development they agreed to continue to allow the Writers Festival to be held at the site. However, due to finacial trouble, Becton has stopped development of the Beach Resort property. This year (this weekend) the Writers Festival is being held at Belongil Fields.
Now - if you’ve read this far you would have noticed that Belongil Fields currently plays host to the three major festival, and that alternative festival sites are not easy to come by… Well, Belongil Fields is set to be subdivided into residential / light industry blocks of land.
So, I dare say that the next few months will be very important to all festival organisers, workers and the tens of thousands of people who attend them.
If you are a regular festival goer, I suggest you join your favorite festival’s email list to be kept up to date on all developments.
Visit;
Rainforest Rescue is calling on Byron Shire residents to get growing on National Tree Day by helping to plant another 500 native rainforest plants.
The local National Tree Day event is taking place on Sunday 2 August and the planting site is the Crystal Castle at 81 Monet Drive, Montecollum, near Mullumbimby. Activities start from 10 am and all residents are invited to volunteer for a few hours by planting, watering and mulching the plants.
“We held our first National Tree Day event in 1999 and since then we’ve planted over 100,000 trees”. said Kelvin Davies of Rainforest Rescue. The trees have been planted on farms and rural properties and also in partnership with other community groups in and around Byron Bay and Mullumbimby.
For more information visit; www.rainforestrescue.org.au & treeday.planetark.com
Tags: national tree day