How Byron Bay used to be an abattoir until 1983 before the celebrities moved in

Incredible pictures show the stark difference between Byron Bay now and almost four decades ago when it was still a working class area.

Until 1983, the town on the NSW far north coast had an abattoir next to its main beach, with the smell of carcasses off-putting to potential tourists.

The ABC has aired historic footage from its old Countrywide TV program showing meat workers finishing a shift shortly before the employer closed its doors for good.  

Just two decades before that, in the early 1960s, Byron Bay was a whaling station where offal next door to the abattoir was pumped into the ocean, attracting hoards of sharks. 

Now only the rich can afford to live there with typical house prices during the past year surging by 31 per cent, as locals oppose Netflix plans for a reality show on Instagram influencers.

After Elders IXL closed the meat works 38 years ago, the land at Belongil Beach was subdivided and turned into luxury waterfront homes.

Delvene Delaney, the co-host of Sale of the Century, and her comedian husband John Cornell, from the Paul Hogan Show, bought some of this land and built a beachfront home.

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They started the influx of celebrities to the lighthouse town, gentrifying the former whaling station and sand mine into a hub, ironically, for vegans and environmentally-minded hippies.

Actors Chris Hemsworth and Russell Crowe and cricketer Adam Gilchrist own multi-million dollar water-view homes, while Hollywood heartthrob Zac Efron has lived there during the Covid pandemic.

With Australians banned from travelling overseas, the already overcrowded town is now even more popular with visitors and new sea change residents from Sydney and Melbourne, who can work from home. 

Max Pendergast, a 78-year-old lifelong resident, missed the old days when the abattoir discouraged tourists from visiting.

‘It was a funny town because it had the abattoir, then it had a whaling station, and then it had sand mining and Norco’s big dairy company here and people didn’t want to come here because it smelled,’ he told the ABC’s 7.30 program.

‘It smelled of the whales, it smelled of the meat works.

‘Frankly, I wish it still did.’

Byron Bay is also now a very expensive place to live.

House right near the town now fetch a median price of $1.87million with prices surging by 36 per cent in 2020, REA Group data from realestate.

Nearby towns, including Bangalow and Mullumbimby in the hinterland, are also dear with mid-point prices in the broader Byron Shire Council surging by 31.2 per cent during the past year to $1.25million in March 2021, Domain group data showed.

In just five years, Byron Bay house prices have surged 76.1 per cent – double the pace of real estate growth in Sydney’s most upmarket coastal suburbs.

By comparison, median house prices in Sydney’s eastern suburbs rose by 14.9 per cent during the past year to $3.6million, or by 40 per cent since 2016.

On Sydney’s Northern Beaches, went up by 25.7 per cent to $2.4million since the start of the pandemic.

Recent figures from Domain revealed rent has increased by 26.4 per cent in Byron Bay in the last year, with the median now at $885 per week.  

Locals, already annoyed at high housing costs, are now protesting against Netflix’s plan to film a reality TV show, Byron Baes, about Instagram influencers who have flocked to the area.

Mayor Simon Richardson is leading the campaign against the streaming service using his town as a backdrop for a potential hit show.

‘The content delivery is very unknown and it has all the hallmarks and potential to be quite vapid and vacuous,’ he told ABC.

‘We are very, very unappreciative of this sort of thing coming to us.’