Growing pains in Byron Bay
Copyright: The Unesco Courier
Environmental and techno groups unite in the Australian bush to mix alternative
politics and artistic expression. Yet tourism may spoil the scene...
Two and a half hour’s drive through Australia’s dense bush north
of Sydney, coloured lights pulse on the crest of a hill as the low rumble of
bass creeps across the immense forest. At the height of summer, the bush surrounding
Byron Bay is alive with underground techno events. A far cry from the regimented
and often alienating world of clubs that electronic music in Sydney and other
major cities have become captive to, these events offer an escape from city
life and a dose of social politics. The open space seemingly provides the freedom
needed for a creative mix of artistic and political action. But the flow of
foreign tourists may arrest the scene’s development.
To some extent, tourism is at the origin of the local techno scene. Building
on the history of gay dance parties which thrived in Sydney from the early 1980s,
British tourists began bringing new music and ideas in 1989 on the back of the
UK rave explosion. They organised underground events using the same tactics
to evade police at home: low-key advertising and venues announced by phone number
on the night. They also began setting up import record stores and became leading
DJs. But by 1991-2, locals had taken over. Every weekend, four or more events
could each draw several thousand people.
Meanwhile, The Vibe Tribe–a loose group of former punks, squatters and
community activists–began holding free parties in Sydney’s public
spaces to blend grassroots community activism with the energy and futurism of
rave culture. They also began setting up fundraisers for various progressive
community organizations while forging alliances with local environmental groups
to highlight issues such as indigenous land rights, the loss of public space
to private interests, and nuclear disarmament. Electronic music was integrated
into everything from community festivals to party-aligned protest events such
as “Reclaim The Streets” in Sydney: multiple soundsystems were wheeled
out at major road intersections, drawing thousands of spontaneous revellers
to highlight the environmental effects of the automobile industry.
But by 1995, repressive regulations and police raids forced the raves off the
streets and into the controlled confines of clubs. The Vibe Tribe disbanded
and some leading members like Kol Diamond went to Byron Bay, where environmental
alliances had been forged by other collectives like Electric Tipi. “Over
the last twenty years or so Byron has become very much the nerve centre of ‘alternative
lifestyling’ in this country,” ex-plains Diamond. “The various
feral subcultures and capitalist Greenies mix freely with New Age gurus.
They sit lazily in Bohemian cafes discussing the politics of making money and
genetically modified soya beans whilst surfing the days away… The local
council is Green [party], the local newspaper is heavily antidevelop-ment and
critical of large corporate businesses, and it seems like the whole town and
surrounding areas have in common a desire to keep the Big Mac out of town and
keep low-density, low-impact development as the main strategy, largely because
Byron Bay is totally dependent on tourism.”
Diamond helped to cultivate the cultural landscape by setting up recording
studios and a local record label, Organarchy. The small raves of the 1990s are
now regular events, with the largest pitched overseas through the Internet,
while drawing hundreds from Sydney and Melbourne. “The parties are very
popular, very loud and thus very controversial,” says Diamond. Chris Gibson,
a lecturer in geography at the University of New South Wales and avid raver,
spent six months in Byron Bay to map the music scene’s internal politics
and its position in a network of global music exchange. “There is an ongoing
debate in Byron about whether to tap into the backpacker market or remain locally
focused,” says Gibson. “The issue here is whether local political
imperatives are necessarily compatible with a less politically-specific global
trance music mentality associated with backpacker tourism.”
Take the case of local DJs fundraising for a forest blockade. Are backpackers
really interested in the forest or just attracted by the “alternative”
nature of the event? Will local events become overshadowed by larger, purely
musical ones with the drawcard of DJs from the global trance scene?
Diamond is less concerned. “Maybe this was the risk four years ago when
a very tight crew of [international] trance DJs and promoters hit this area
very suddenly and in a rather calculated move,” he says. “They were
looking for a new foothold with which to exploit their corporate agendas. Byron
quickly became very fashionable to visit but it was always very expensive to
live in compared to Thailand and India, so only those who actually did desire
a more alternative eco-friendly way stayed.”
The debate over tourism is now spilling beyond the music community to fuel
a conflict with local authorities. Tensions erupted over plans for a techno
Millennium Eve. According to Diamond, “three techno parties were threatening
to attract more people and more attention than the town’s official celebrations.”
Tourist dollars
To begin with, the local council does not make any money from the free-spirited
bush parties. Second, these bring-your-own-booze events tend to draw large crowds
away from bars and venues in town. The rave crackdown in Sydney (1995) was largely
due to pressure from the alcohol industry. So it was not a total surprise to
find “police harassment at the parties all throughout the night,”
as Diamond describes, “from set-up to dawn leading to the confiscation
of equipment and charges being laid.” For Diamond, the crackdown represented
the council’s decision “to put the tourist dollar before the artistic
desires of the local community.”
With the party season quieting down over the colder months, Byron crews are
waiting to see how the politi-cal climate develops. Meanwhile, Organarchy is
working to release more music from Byron locals to reinforce artistic and political
independence. “All struggle is local,” says Diamond, “global-anything
[music industry, tourism, etc.] reeks straight away of something to be consumed
in large doses…”.
