Coronavirus: one man manages to unite the Byron Bay region in anger

The lockdown in the Byron Bay region was quick, and so were the reprisals. The backlash against infected Rose Bay man Zoran Radovanovic has turned ugly.

Cassie-Ann Hartley takes a break from the front counter of the Federal general store, 20km west of Byron Bay.

The Lismore Base Hospital has about 260 beds, and this week one of them, inside its box-like building and jumbled annexes on a hill in the heart of town in NSW’s Northern Rivers just south of the Queensland border was occupied by perhaps the most loathed and reviled man in the region’s recent history.

His name was Zoran Radovanovic, 52, from Sydney’s harbourside eastern suburb of Rose Bay, and he was hospitalised with the Covid-19 Delta variant.

Radovanovic had allegedly travelled last month from locked-down Greater Sydney with his two teenage children to the Byron Shire, taking up an Airbnb outside the quaint village of Bangalow.

While infected with the virus, knowingly or not, he and his children had an active few days in the region before they tested positive to the virus last Monday. Radovanovic, and subsequently both of his kids, were hospitalised.

The Radovanovic itinerary included the Byron Massage Clinic, Success Thai Food in Byron, Sparrow Coffee, FoodWorks supermarket, Bangalow Pharmacy and Butcher Baker Cafe, all in Bangalow, and Harvest restaurant and cafe in Newrybar. Other stops ­included a car wash and a petrol station.

His precise movements were sketchy because he had allegedly not used the Covid QR check-in system.

It was rumoured he’d ventured out of Greater Sydney to investigate properties for sale in the Byron Bay region.

During his stay he fell progressively ill and ended up in hospital. He has since been charged on seven counts of breaching public health notices, including three for “not complying with noticed Covid-19 directions” and four of not complying with “electronic registration directive”. He has been granted “strict” provisional bail and is expected to appear in the Lismore Local Court on September 13.

Zoran Radovanovic. Picture: Facebook

As a result of his actions and movements, the entire Byron Shire was immediately locked down last Monday for at least seven days, affecting tens of thousands of people, choking off local businesses and closing schools.

Outside the Lismore hospital in Uralba Street on Friday, it ­appeared business as usual. An elderly woman in a white hospital smock and bright pink socks, and attached to a drip bag, sat in her wheelchair and dragged on a cigarette. A child in purple pyjamas waited on a bench seat with her mother. Nurses came and went from the staff car park. And a sandwich board advertised a Covid-19 swab test clinic.

But elsewhere, across this landscape of dairy and macadamia nut farms, of tropical rainforests and famous surf beaches, the region’s focus was largely on the man from Rose Bay, in his hospital room, ­behind one of hundreds of white pull-down blinds.

Community backlash

The local backlash was immediate, personal, and ferocious.

Social media community boards lit up with endless condemnation of this stranger who, through his own “selfish” actions, had brought a great slab of northern NSW to its knees. He was instantly dubbed Captain Covid or Patient Zero.

One person advertised a new T-shirt. It had two words printed on the front: F..K ZORAN.

Other posts on the Byron Bay and Bangalow community Facebook pages hinted that Radovanovic was a “criminal”. (It was reported this week that Radovanovic did in fact have a criminal history, having been convicted in the 1990s of possessing, growing and using cannabis, as well as burglary and motor vehicle theft. More recently, he had reportedly pleaded guilty to two counts of common assault.)

Early news reports on Radovanovic suggested that he was not “a Covid believer” and had flouted QR protocols.

One community board member suggested he should be publicly stoned. Radovanovic was called a terrorist. Someone said his ventilator should be turned off.

“Has he not voided the right to medical care at this point?” ­another wrote. “I mean, at least hold back on the painkiller, if not the oxygen.”

One rumour persisted that he had “tried to break out of the hospital and was under police guard”.

BRING OUT YER DEAD, someone else declared.

Blow to economy

Byron Bay mayor Michael Lyon was livid.

“He got sick and didn’t get tested until he was really sick,” Lyon reportedly said. “It seems to be a clear case of negligence and intentional disregard. I think there needs to be some kind of penalty for that.”

Lyon told the Weekend Australian that if the shire could get through to Sunday or Monday without any Covid cases then everyone could breathe a little easier.

“People are angry and frustrated and aggrieved,” he said. “They’re expressing that and it’s good to get that out. This has had a massive impact on our economy, as it does on any economy, but ­especially ours which is based so heavily on tourism and hospitality. It’s been a big blow.”

Mixed messages

The impact of the snap lockdown was immediate and far-reaching.

In Suffolk Park, just south of the Byron Bay town, queues had formed outside the local medical centre by early morning on Wednesday, less than 48 hours after the lockdown announcement. Over at the Cavanbah sports complex in Byron Bay, the drive-through Covid testing centre was inundated, with cars stretching the length of Australian football and soccer fields. The wait was about two hours, according to those who sat in the line.

In Brunswick Heads, just north of Byron, parks beside the Brunswick River were empty. A handful of people gathered at open coffee shops. Only to local surfers had the landscape not changed. They bobbed like black seals in a decent swell off the Brunswick Surf Club.

Over in Mullumbimby, 15km northwest of Byron Bay, and ­famous during the pandemic for its apparent surfeit of anti-vaxxers and Covid deniers, roadwork crews took advantage of the lockdown and were refreshing the line work down Buringbar Street, the main drag. (In fact, road crews were busy right across the shire from the early morning hours of Tuesday, the first day of lockdown, widening roads and patching potholes with the traffic diminished.)

One man, delivering copies of the local Echo newspaper, was chatting vigorously to a shopkeeper. “It’s not a vaccine,” he said. “It’s not. It’s an experimental DNA treatment …”

There was some evidence of low-level Covid insurrection in town. Someone had scrawled in black pen on the wall of the Middle Pub: Pfff. COVID SCHMOVID. And on the wall of the Courthouse Hotel was affixed a small green sticker which read: THIS STICKER IS HARDER TO REMOVE THAN YOUR BODILY AUTONOMY AND CIVIL LIBERTIES WERE.

But most residents out and about wore masks and kept their social distance.

Life goes on

Bangalow, less than 5km west of Byron, had appeared heavily on Radovanovic’s travel itinerary. He had shopped extensively at the local FoodWorks at the top of Byron Street.

On Friday it was open for business and shoppers came and went seemingly untroubled.

A FoodWorks staff member, sitting outside having a cigarette, said she wasn’t allowed to talk to the media.

So everything’s good inside the supermarket?

“Everything’s fine,” she said.

Nobody’s spooked?

“The customers have been ­really great.”

Radovanovic had also attended the Bangalow Pharmacy across the street before his illness worsening and he was taken by ambulance to Lismore hospital.

The pharmacy had several ­notices posted in its window. One said: ATTENTION!!! NO ENTRY DURING LOCKDOWN. PLEASE WEAR A MASK OR WE WILL NOT FEEL COMFORTABLE SERVING YOU.

Still, the ghost of Zoran lingered. Few people walked the streets. And a local news crew searched the empty crosshatch of streets for someone, anyone, to talk to.

One shire local, who declined to be named, said the region was abuzz with rumour and innuendo about the Sydney visitor who single-handedly flattened the Northern Rivers.

“There’s a lot of anger,” he said. “It’s his aggressive noncompliance that is so infuriating. They say he’s a criminal. That he doesn’t believe in Covid. That he wasn’t here looking for property but for some other business reasons. But in terms of this guy, you know, look, I hope he survives and ends up in jail.”

Mandy Nolan – Mullumbimby resident, comedian and the Greens candidate for the seat of Richmond in the next federal election – said the cause of this recent Covid outrage was far-reaching.

“It’s hard not to be worried ­because I think this is going to hit big in about 10 days,” Nolan said. “I think what’s happened in our community was destined to happen. There was no so-called ring of steel around Sydney to stop people travelling. We all know that people from Sydney have been travelling here. Rather than be angry at one man you’ve got to ask the question: why is all of this happening? Why are there people coming into our community from a lockdown?

“We have to focus on a system that is failing us at the moment.”

Paradise not immune

For decades Byron Bay was largely protected from troubling real-world influences by generational activists, ideologists and locals with an almost indestructible ­social conscience. They stood up to multinational fast-food giants and resort chains. They battled and won against rampant development. They protected the area’s natural assets.

Recently, though, the metaphorical barricades around Byron have started to evaporate before the locals’ very eyes. With its proxy-Hollywood vibe, it’s out-of-control property market, and the wholesale acquisition of pubs and clubs to development moguls for price tags in the hundreds of millions, even someone as proudly tribal as Mandy Nolan agreed that the place had become something else.

“Not long ago Byron was still a bit of a secret,” she said. “And now it’s – I’m trying to find the right word for it – it’s gone from niche to mainstream as far as the people who want to come here.

“I guess it’s become mainstream.”

As for the infected Rose Bay man occupying a bed in the hospital in Uralba St, Lismore, he and Covid-19 – that great leveller – simply waltzed into the Northern Rivers and went about their business unfettered.

That otherwise innocuous chain of events – a massage, a Thai meal, a coffee, washing the car and filling its tank with fuel – has sparked fear, anxiety, anger, ­financial hardship, dread and threats of violence and revenge across the entire region.

It could have happened anywhere. This time it was the Byron Shire.

One ordinary man proved emphatically that there is no extraordinary dome around Byron.

The place is – and this for many may be the hardest notion to grasp – just like everywhere else.