The transformation of Byron
It used to be famous as a hippies’ retreat. Now Byron Bay is the ultimate playground for billionaires.
There is just something about Byron Bay. Some think it is spiritual, some say it is the natural beauty while others believe the beachside town on the easternmost tip of Australia simply represents freedom to be who you want to be. Whatever Byron has, it has lured people for over 22,000 years, from the first indigenous inhabitants, to Captain Cook in 1770 to the hippies and surfers of the 1970s to the celebrities, billionaires, chefs and 2.1 million annual visitors of today.
“I originally thought I was going to build my retirement house here,” says Peggy Flannery, who instead opened luxury resort Elements of Byron. “My husband Brian and I were told about a block of land that was for sale after the GFC hit. We came down from Brisbane, I jumped out of the car and it was such a beautiful spot, I said to Brian, ‘Let’s buy it!’ I didn’t even know it was zoned tourism. So that was a bit of a shock. Then we had to work out what to do with the site. That is how it all started.”
The Flannerys had no experience in hotel management, having made their fortune in coalmining. Brian was a mining engineer when he met Peggy decades ago; he was coming back from a coalmine and stopped at a petrol station in the tiny town of Gulgong where Peggy worked doing the books and pumping petrol. Brian is now worth $1.33 billion and he and Peggy also own a property development company that builds apartments and invests in childcare and aged-care facilities.
“It has been a huge learning curve,” says Peggy of building Elements. When the couple bought the 88ha beachfront property in 2009 for $18.5 million they were walking into a controversy. It had been purchased in the 1990s by Club Med, whose efforts to build a resort were stymied by local protests and a long-winded court case, which Club Med lost. The land was then bought by developer Becton but it also failed to build thanks to regulations and the GFC. So the Flannerys brought in a friend, Jeremy Holmes. The then 28-year-old was a town planner by trade and helped them through the process by working with the community and the council. “I think the biggest challenge with this site in the past was unlocking the approvals and getting that to work,” says Holmes, who is now the development director at the resort.
Peggy was determined to build a resort that was “complementary to the site” and worked with the natural environment. “I wanted something that was organic and that fitted into the landscape and didn’t dominate it,” she says. They chose Brisbane-based Shane Thompson Architects to design the original 94 villas, dining facilities and pool. It took six years from start to finish. The $100m resort occupies just 10 per cent of the land, which they rehabilitated with 175,000 new plants, and is importantly the only one at Byron that has direct beach access. “It was hugely satisfying,” Peggy says on the day Elements of Byron finally opened in 2016. “We were able to stand back and think ‘Wow, we created this’. We achieved it when so many others couldn’t. I think we brought the local community along with us and they embraced the opening as well. We had a huge pool party with 250 of the local people.”
Elements has since expanded and now has a total of 203 villas, an adults-only pool area, an expansive day spa and more dining options. Flannery has also hired ex-London chef Simon Jones to oversee food and beverage at the resort, including the main restaurant, recently renamed Azure. Jones, who trained under Marco Pierre White and Raymond Blanc, had worked at hotels all around the world. “I said I’d never do hotels again, but this was very attractive,” Jones says.
Peggy still lives in Brisbane and commutes to Elements to ensure the smooth operation of the resort (run day to day by Accor) and of the world’s first solar-powered train, which runs on 110-year-old railway tracks between the resort and the main town of Byron. It was Brian’s way of easing early community concerns about traffic congestion. “It just grew from a 1949 heritage diesel train to one that converted to solar,” she says. “And everyone said we couldn’t do it. But that is what Byron is about: it is about being creative and finding creative solutions that are also sustainable.”
So what is so special about Byron Bay? Why did she jump out of the car, buy a property on the spot and decide to become a hotelier? “This sounds a strange thing to say, and people will probably think I am crazy, but Byron has always had a certain spirituality. You can go to a million other places but you can never get the same feeling you do when you come to Byron. I think it’s the nature. You can come to Byron and you can be true to yourself.”
Lyn Parche experienced a similar sensation when she and her husband John landed in Byron Bay in 2002 at the invitation of her friends Gerry Harvey and Katie Page. The Australian retail giants had bought 18ha of land south of Cape Byron, close to Tallow Beach, and wanted the Parches’ opinion on the viability of building a luxury resort. Lynne and John had managed high-end hotels around the world and were living in the US when they got the call, hopped on the plane and found themselves on a neglected property complete with abandoned cars. She was unsure about the site and was about to advise Harvey to sell it, but then saw the extraordinary rainforest.
“There is something magical about it,” she says. “I don’t think I will ever see a rainforest like that again. I look at it and I think there is something bigger than us.” That lush rainforest became the centrepiece of The Byron at Byron Resort and Spa, which the Parches helped design and have run since it opened in December 2004. It is what you look out at from the infinity pool or the deck of the restaurant and bar and the 91 suites are located in its midst, with boardwalks that snake through the lush tropical environment. “It’s just beautiful and really is mine and John’s baby,”
says Lynne of the resort, which did face opposition from the town and the mayor when it first opened but has become one of the area’s most exclusive places to stay.
“We changed the landscape in Byron when it came to luxury accommodation,” she tells WISH. “There was nothing here like it before us.” The resort recently underwent a renovation, with Sydney-based interior designer Luchetti Krelle refreshing the restaurant, bar and lobby. It is also has a spa in the main building that comes complete with a hidden outdoor oasis amid the treatment rooms. But Byron at Byron is sought after not only for its rainforest or spa but also for John and Lyn themselves. The duo are a fixture at the restaurant and bar, spending hours chatting to guests who often return year after year after year. “It’s a dream for a hotelier,” Lyn says.
Another Byron Bay icon that has just had a makeover is Raes on Wategos. The boutique hotel on the shores of Wategos beach started its life as restaurant in the 1960s before being turned into a private home and then opening as Rae’s in 1994. Melbourne real estate publishing mogul Antony Catalano made his first venture into the world of hospitality in 2013 when he bought 50 per cent of it and then completed the purchase in 2014. “I am Byron Bay person,” he said at the time. “I love the place.”
His son Jordy, also hailing from Melbourne, has taken the role of managing director of the seven-room hotel, overseen a renovation by Sydney-based interior designer Tamsin Johnson and hired key new staff: Francesca Webster as general manager and ex-Attica chef and fellow Melburnian Jason Barratt to rejuvenate the restaurant. Barratt had just left Ben Shewry’s award-winning fine-dining restaurant and started his own sandwich shop in inner-city Richmond called Hector’s Deli (dubbed by Broadsheet “the most over-qualified sandwich shop in Melbourne”), when he decided he wanted a change.
“I was talking to a friend at the deli and said to her, ‘If you hear of anything, let me know’, and literally the next day, she says ‘What about Byron?’ and I said ‘No, I don’t think so, I am not a beach person, I am a city guy’,” Barratt tells WISH in Raes’ dining room. “But then Francesca gave me a call and within three weeks, I was looking for a house and flying up here. To have such an iconic hotel that already has a huge reputation but is missing the part that I can bring to it — that challenge for me was bigger than opening a restaurant yourself.”
Webster and Barratt want to bring a younger clientele to the restaurant and make it a standalone dining destination that attracts locals as well as visitors. “I came up and ate in the old restaurant and straight away I thought it didn’t make sense to come up here and eat this food. It was dated and old-school Asian-French fusion cuisine. It wasn’t great. Francesca said ‘You have free range, we trust you’.” Barratt met the local suppliers and producers and decided he wanted a really simple menu. Seafood is key (although it is not as freely available in Byron as Barratt expected) as is the best produce from local farmers and using native ingredients. These include lemon aspen fruit from a tree just metres from Raes and saltbush and sea spinach from the foreshore.
Barratt is not the only chef to have been lured to Byron Bay by work or the lifestyle. The seaside town has become a genuine must-do foodie destination, with top chefs and restaurateurs migrating from cities around Australia and opening places including Three Blue Ducks at The Farm (ex-Sydney), Light Years (ex-Melbourne), 100 Mile Table (ex-Sydney), the acclaimed Fleet at nearby Brunswick Heads (ex-Melbourne) and the award-winning Paper Daisy (ex-Brisbane) at Halcyon House on Cabarita Beach 40 minutes down the road. “Byron definitely has a food scene now. It has definitely evolved,” he says. “From what I can tell, you used to be able to come here and not have a week’s worth of places to eat if you were a foodie but you do now.”
Alessandra Viel and Mauro de Riso were another couple who heard the call of the Byron Bay region a few years ago but they came from a bit further afield: the Italian island of Capri. They met Siobhan Bickle while working at a luxury resort (Viel as a spa manager and de Riso as general manager) on Capri. Bickle, with her sister Elisha had just bought an old surf motel north of Byron Bay. “‘I have the most amazing property at a place called Cabarita Beach and we want to do something incredible with it’, is what she said to me,” de Riso says. The pair took some convincing but came on board and now run Halcyon House, consistently named one of the top boutique hotels in Australia.
“It is our little baby,” says Viel, who manages Halcyon House’s day spa, and who oversaw the opening of a new spa building next to the hotel. Designed by architect Virginia Kerridge and interior designer Anna Spiro (who were also responsible for the hotel’s beautiful Instagrammable aesthetic), it strays away from the clean white look of traditional day spas and instead is an array of colour. “We just set about creating a beautiful home to able to share with our guests,” adds de Riso.
In the year ending June 2017, there were 2.1 million visitors to the Byron Bay region and they spent $722m locally. Those visitors include the traditional mix of backpackers and families but more and more are coming for experiences like Halcyon House, Elements or Byron at Byron. “The luxury market is increasing as is the boutique market,” says Peter Wotton, president of Destination Byron.
Despite the evolution of the town, Byron is still unmistakably Byron. There is still something about the place: it has kept its spirituality, its freedom, its cheek. This could not be more aptly demonstrated than by the local newspaper that WISH picks up in the lobby of Elements. Page 3 carries a story, and a large high-resolution photograph, of residents protesting the possible closure of a nudist beach by holding a demonstration in the nude. “Well,” Peggy says, “it is Byron!”