Echo Journo Turns in Top Story From Byron Bay Local Court

WITH THE Echo’s usual court reporter away, Paul Bibby was dispatched to Byron Bay Local Court to chase an animal-cruelty story.

Make sure you click the link at the end to catch Paul’s full story on the Echonetdaily website…

IT’S A GREAT day to be at the beach – one of those melting mornings when lolling in the waves is the only sensible course of action.

But I’m not at the beach.

I’m in Byron Bay Local Court.

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After plonking down on a government-issued plastic chair, there’s every chance I’ll be waiting all day for my guy to have his turn.

Yet despite feeling mildly resentful about the direction my day has taken, I’m gradually drawn in by the tales that unfold in the vault-like courtroom.

It’s the not-so-shiny side of the Byron Shire – drug use, petty theft, drink driving, and the seemingly endless cycle of violence taking place behind closed doors.

Yet behind every case is a personal story that reveals the human condition in a far more profound way than people-watching at Main Beach ever could.

As I assemble myself for the day, the court is hearing a case I quickly dub ‘Fallen Football Star’.

Facing charges of drug possession, the powerfully built youth walks to the chair in the middle of the courtroom with his head down.

Fallen Star has struggled to find direction ever since his representative rugby league career was ended by a ‘catastrophic knee injury’.

He’d managed to avoid any major run-ins with the cops until they caught him with 20 tablets of MDMA (MethyleneDioxyMethAmphetamine) at the Falls Festival.

They initially charged him with supply, but this was later reduced to possession and the jittery giant’s solicitor tells the court the pills were ‘for personal use’.

Magistrate Geoff Dunlevy looks at Fallen Star over his thick-rimmed glasses and declares that 20 pills is ‘a ridiculously large amount of psychoactive drugs for a single person to use’.

Nevertheless, he seems to accept that Fallen Star is no dealer.

The most precious words anyone who has committed a crime can hear are ‘no conviction recorded’.