No place for pop-up boozers on our beaches

SALLY SPAIN, OXENFORD

THOSE who invest in businesses should be able to count on adequate parking, via their own contributions and viable council neighbourhood planning. Council removing 50 Burleigh car parking spaces does not seem to fit in with this generally accepted reasonable expectation. (GCB, 18/2/21 New bar planned for James St, Burleigh Heads by Maman restaurant founder Oliver Frost) Those, such as surf clubs and duly licensed premises who invest in dining and alcohol service venues along our coastline areas, should expect that the beach vista of their amenity should not be subsumed and their investment undercut, by pop-up alcohol service areas on what are public property beaches. Those who invest in homes overlooking the open space of open ocean, bordered by unimpaired white sand vistas, should not have to gaze down upon, or have their views obscured by, commercial liquor service outlets and accompanying paraphernalia and clustered patrons. Those who walk the Ocean Way should not have their experience potentially bordered not on one side but on both sides, at intervals, by businesses pushing drinks and dinners and booze and burgers. Surf lifesavers should not have added to the complexity of their brave watch those drink divers, who would likely become part of this dangerous mix. Those, including children, who as past generations have done, swim, play, fish, relax and stroll on our untrammelled beach areas, should not have clubs, bars and a precedent for many spruikers and sellers and their wares, who litter beaches overseas, given any occupation of our white sands. The hazards of loud music and loud drinkers should not be enabled, by council precedent, at any point, and no clubs or mini pubs, on what are our dunes and our sweeping sands, should be enabled to drown out the cries of the gulls and the song of the sea.