At the moment, I live in Byron Bay, a popular tourist town, located in northern New South Wales, but I am originally from a small coastal town called Port Macquarie, about 5 hours south of here.
The hardcore scene in Byron Bay can be somewhat segregrated at times, having the bands Parkway Drive and 50 Lions hailing from here, there can be a sense of "I've been into hardcore longer than you" and some jaded attitudes towards younger people, but as a whole I think Byron Bay has a scene made up of smaller groups, creating one of the most tight knit scenes I've been involved with. There is a long line of old bands, joke bands, new bands and bands that never were in Byron Bay. A lot of the people involved in hardcore here have been friends since they were children.
Shows are fairly regular here, a young guy puts shows on in his shed where a bunch of local bands and smaller touring bands get together every so often and pile into a tiny concrete room with no windows and struggle to breathe from the dust and heat in there.
There is also the Youth Action Center, referred to as the yac, where bigger touring bands play, for example, Rise And Fall, Trapped Under Ice, Terror,and Comeback Kid have all passed through here in the last 8 months. The yac is a relatively small venue, with a maximum capacity of maybe 150 people, with a small stage and good sound. All of the shows are booked by only a handful of people, going under the name of BBHC, with only minimal financial benefits from outside sources, while DIY has become a slightly bastardised term, I think a lot of DIY ethics go unnoticed by a lot of people here.
Although there is a lot of separation between older and younger, popular and less popular people in Byron Bay, everyone knows each other one way or another. Byron is a small community as it is, so the hardcore scene is compact, a lot of people from surrounding areas come for shows, giving a strong feeling of community.
These bands are probably the best from around this area:
Ghost Town
People Rain
The Street Youth RIP
Spray
Shackles
Blight
Retriever
Word Up
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