Byron Bay

The road to and out of the town of Byron Bay is a city-like jam. The little town is eaten by cars. It “...has grown too fast for the infrastructure to keep up.” The beach and the eateries all have the stinking exhausts turned right into one's drink or food. Crossing the roads one feels like a swamp wallaby on the Pacific Highway. Some frustrated 4x4s actually deliberately accelerate to push pedestrians out of the way.
A huge building site and cavalcades of trucks provide the acoustic backdrop. The shops have the ambience of any Sydney mall. Hardly anything specific to the area. Real Estate agents offer 'cash cows' (housing) in their shop windows, stressing the great abundance of water, for which Australia is renowned. There is a disproportionate number of travel-agents where one could consult on how to get out of the place and 'get away from it all'. 'Backpackers' look disenchanted at the 'bus (stop) out of town'. How many kilograms of (imported) crystals can they drag out of town anyway? “ Seething with tourist mess” the visitors leave the beach town which once was for locals only!. Maybe visitors will stop coming and locals can build their sprawl & mall mono-culture undisturbed up and down the coast and hinterland by themselves. Man seen wearing t-shirt (available in a shop): 'I love my tractor' on which they ride their lives away. They probaby mean the mower or golf-buggy, but tractor, sounds more productive. The 3.5 kid family( with 2.5 hummers and 2 horses and a dog ) drive into town to get their dead-tree edition of the ever-same news, slabs of meat and plonk. Culture seems to consist of squared lomandra tufts along the road. An oversized mega-sub-urbia with the 'tyranny' of (petrol) distance.
Another case of: Eat your cake and sell it
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