What more beautiful place to get married than the beaches or hinterland of the Northern Rivers?  Verandah Magazine’s photographer Vanessa (The Lioness) Moore, showcases three of her recent personal favourites.  From a wedding on the beach to a Hills Hoist hitch – there’s nothing like a like a little romance on Valentine’s Day.

Says Ness: “I’ve been photographing Weddings and portraits for the past couple of years in Byron.  It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world to work as a photographer. Especially as a wedding photographer because there’s so much love and beauty in the area.”

Moore is launching a wedding photography business in combination with local videographer, Terry Brown from Byron Video, creating individual packages for their clients.  She’s also a talented family portrait photographer, and delights in taking the candid, natural shots that are her hallmark. “I’ve got four children of my own,” she says, “and so I realise the importance of capturing those special times.  For me my photography is about striving for a natural, truthful beauty within my images and that is exactly what wedding photography and family portraits give me the chance to do.”

If you’re interested in talking to Vanessa Moore about her photography packages go to: thelioness.photography

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A shark captured on film by the Channel 7 helicopter shortly after the fatal attack at Byron Bay

Although the local Byron community was shocked to its core by the fatal shark attack at Clarke’s Beach recently, it has not been the only blow to the collective psyche, writes Candida Baker.

I was getting ready for bed the other night when my daughter called out to me from her bedroom.

“Mum,” she said, “I can’t help thinking about the man who was taken by a shark. It’s so sad.”

The strange thing was, I had been thinking about it at exactly that moment as well, trying to imagine how on earth his wife was coping, the odd personal markers for that day – two friends of mine in the surf down at Byron at the time that it happened, another friend playing with her daughter down at the water’s edge at the next beach, wondering what the sirens were about. I went into my daughter’s room, and we cuddled together.   “I need to say,” she said echoing my thoughts again. “How is his family feeling? How is his wife? She was there.”

We’ve had more than our fair share of fatalities here in the past few months. As well as Paul Wilcox’s death from loss of blood after the three-metre Great White Pointer attacked him as he was swimming from the Pass to Main Beach in Byron Bay, four local young people, Jessica Camidge, 22, Richard Wells, 19, William Manton 20, and Samantha Enright, 17, lost their lives when their car slammed into a tree on the Pacific Highway at Newrybar just after midnight while they were overtaking a truck on their way from Byron Bay to Ballina and two months ago a 20-year-old male surfer, Stuart Butler disappeared when he and two other friends were caught in a rip.

Somehow living in a small community, the shockwaves from this sort of news is much more extreme. Even though when you live in a city, as I did for many years, you become almost oblivious to the sound of sirens, here, they are still outside the norm – a portent of something dreadful. Unfortunately in the Northern Rivers that something dreadful is too often a car accident, and we have the sad distinction of recording the highest regional road toll in the past 12 months. This has been the case for too long. The 2006 crash at Broken Head that killed four young men affected the community so much that the then-new artistic director of NORPA (Northern Rivers Performing Arts) that he commissioned local playwright Janis Balodis to write a play, Engine, about the ripple effect of grief and loss through a family and community. And also the effect on those that have to attend the accidents – a friend put it into perspective when she pointed out that one young policewoman, Inspector Bobbie Cullen, had been at all three tragedies. That’s a heavy load for the psyche to digest, process and move on from, whilst still having to work.

Life goes on: Clarkes Beach shortly after the shark attack. Photo: Sonia Friedrich

 Death, of course, happens all around us, all around the world, all the time, but somehow we are (mostly) able to detach ourselves from the pain of people passing before their time, but when it is within the community we belong to, or resonates personally with us in some way, then it is very different. I can still remember vividly the weekend my daughter and I were in Sydney to catch up with relatives, and while we were at the local shopping centre my phone rang. It was a friend from Byron telling me that a teenage girl whose family we knew had crashed her car and died, and her younger brother was seriously injured. It had happened in heavy rain, after months of dry weather, and she had lost control of the car on a corner. And although I’d never met the girl, I was close enough to the family (because we’d inherited an old family pony of theirs) for me to literally feel the colour drain away, and shock waves begin to wash through my body.

But even though there is only a one in 292,525 chance of being killed by a shark, and there have been only 159 fatal attacks in Australia in the past 100 years, and yet close to 1,200 people in Australia died in car accidents in 2013 alone – the fact is that somehow the very idea of a shark attack triggers some deep, instinctual Jaws-style fear response to the monster from the deep.* Fortunately, here in New South Wales, there is no talk of shark culling as has been occurring in Western Australia. To me culling sharks because they kill on average one person a year makes about as much sense as culling teenagers since they are the most-at-risk group – and the group that put others most at risk!

Here, in Byron Bay, where shark attacks are uncommon but not unknown – my son witnessed a woman beating off a shark that was trying to attack her kayak, a surfer friend also beat one off by repeatedly hitting him over the nose, 16-year-old bodysurfer Peter Edmonds was killed in a shark attack at Ballina in 2008 – this fatal attack still seemed somehow different, partly perhaps, because it was so close to town – on Clarke’s Beach on a quiet day. It seemed somehow as if the beach had lost a little of its innocence.

And as my daughter and I cuddled into the night, she whispered in my ear, “Mum, I don’t think I’ll do snorkelling as a sport next term.”

“No,” I replied. “Good idea.” Suddenly her chosen sport for several terms, which had included snorkelling sessions at Main Beach, and out at Julian Rocks, and which, from afar I’d marvelled at – snorkelling? A school sport! How wonderful! – seemed retrospectively insane. My child had been in that water?

I held her close and thought that perhaps the only lesson to learn from this sudden attack on our collective Northern Rivers psyche from road and sea, was to love our loved ones even better, even harder. Because you just never know.

Photograph of police bunting: Sonia Friedrich.  Statistics from ABS and The Australian.

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Yoga teacher Sue Hawkins greets the dawn in Byron Bay

Television and radio producer Sue Hawkins was working 18 hours a day and suffering from stress overload before she discovered yoga. 20 years later, Hawkins is one of the pioneers of yoga retreats, holding them regularly in Byron Bay, Bali and Europe, writes Georgina Bible.

“I felt something was missing from my life,” Byron-Bay based Yoga Health Retreats founder Sue Hawkins says of her past career in Sydney. “I was burnt out – like so many people working in advertising my entire life was built around work and eighteen hour days were not unusual. I was under huge stress and I’d started to read books about raising consciousness to try and deal with the pressure.” Scanning the pages of a new book, the words, ‘I need to find my centre,’ struck a deep chord, and Hawkins began the process of dissolving her life as she knew it. “When I read those words about finding my centre, it was like something fell into place,” she says. “I didn’t know how I would find my centre but I knew that somehow it involved going to yoga.”

Hawkins had already had a brush with yoga as a 21 year-old. But somehow she caught the attention of the teacher who was a 65 year-old yoga matriarch. “She was strict and was so hard on me if I missed class,” Hawkins says. “But I wasn’t looking for anything serious – I was just trying it out, so I stopped going.”

When the call to find her centre came seven years later, Hawkins inadvertently picked another taskmaster for a yoga teacher. But this time, she welcomed the discipline of a daily early morning yoga routine. However the more she studied the more yoga began to expose her inner conflict about working and living in the two divergent worlds of advertising and yoga. “I was running my own production company and was putting in huge hours every week,” Hawkins says. “My adrenals were burnt out. I was unhappy and ready for a change. So when a boyfriend told me he was moving to Byron Bay I jumped at it. I told him, ‘You’re my ticket out of Sydney!’”

Sue Hawkins: Founder of Yoga Health Retreats

Hawkins made the move from Sydney to Byron Bay in 1993. She continued with her yoga classes, bought a clothes shop and began importing clothes from Indonesia. One day she noticed a sign advertising a nine-month yoga teacher training course – it was a defining moment when everything fell into place. “I’d always wanted to be a teacher,” Sue says. “I remember as a child I loved to play games where I would pretend to be a teacher in front of a class of students. So becoming a yoga teacher was the most natural thing.”

In 1999, Sue sold her clothing shop and headed to India to deepen her knowledge in Astanga yoga, Ayurveda and philosophy. In Mysore she received a mantra and underwent initiation with a Vaishnava Guru which cemented her on the yogic path. Hawkins returned to Australia and taught yoga for Yoga Arts studio in Byron Bay where she also began to develop her dream of hosting yoga retreats.

Since 2001, Hawkins has been hosting yoga retreats internationally. Retreats are now held regularly in Byron Bay, Bali and in Europe. Sue says the main focus of the retreats is to nurture and inspire others to live a healthy and empowering life. However, it’s something she’s had to remind herself to do, especially earlier this year when her father died and after a major relationship breakdown.

“It was a difficult time,” says Hawkins. “There were days I did not even want to get out of bed in the morning, let alone do yoga. But I found that if I nurtured myself by going outside and just letting myself be in nature, nature gave me the energy to move. Nature gave me the energy to get out of bed in the morning. Nature gave me the energy to move to the mat, to continue my yoga practices and to be present with what was happening – to be present with the grief – and I feel great now. Life is cyclic – there will always be good times and hard times. You just have to be with what is – you have to find your centre in it.”

* An exclusive to Verandah Magazine readers – Yoga Health Retreats is offering a special discount to their next Bali Joyful Retreat in October. Bring a friend and receive a 10% discount off the price per person. To book, call 0404 467 744 or visit www.yogahealthretreats.com/yoga-retreats/bali-joyful-spirit/

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Check out David’s photography on: https://www.davidhancock.com.au/ and his Wild Byron book on:  https://tinyurl.com/3okwrm

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Winter…what winter?  A perfect day  at Broken Head beach near Byron Bay captured by The Lioness.

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Grommets galore – the future of Australian surfing is in safe hands. Photo: Ness Moore

At Lennox Head’s recent Oz Grom competition, Ness Moore found the future of surfing in Australia is in safe hands…

Flying along at high speed, the pint-sized grommet launches himself at the lip of the wave – projecting high into the air. With poise and grace he flies, weightless – board and boy, sea and sky. He’s made it and he’s only 10.

The Skullcandy Oz Grom Open, held on seven-mile beach at Lennox Head, not far from Byron Bay,  is a vibrant showcase of some of our best junior surfers. With competitors flying in from all corners of the world, the competition is a highlight on the junior circuit, and it seems Australian surfing is set to continue its dominance throughout the world.

Blonde haired grommets roam the event site, surfboards and skateboards scatter the shoreline. It’s a festival of fun and everyone’s invited. Don’t be fooled though. These young competitors mean business. They’re here to win – with style and grace beyond their years, they perform aerials, executing exciting new-age manoeuvres –  they’ve got it all covered. They’re agile, fast and know how to smash a lip to pieces. They’re all the best surfers combined. A dash of Dane, a taste of Taj, a heap of Kelly and a mountain of Medina. These kids have grown up watching the best of the best, now they’re going to be even better and with kids as young as seven surfing with such prowess, one can only speculate on the heights they will reach.

Beautiful weather and great waves made for a perfect day out. Photo: Ness Moore

One such competitor who is aiming for big things is 12-year-old Finn Cox. Finn has been surfing for six years and competing for two years, and this year he made it into the quarter-finals of the under-12 division of the Skullcandy grommet open. “I love being out in the water surfing,” Finn says, “although my favourite wave is ‘Gallows’, back in Margaret River which is my home town.” Finn’s long-term ambition is to become a full-time professional surfer.

12-year-old Finn Cox. Photo: Ness Moore

The waves were perfect for this year’s event. Sandbanks lined up with right and left-handers peeling off up and down the beach. The kids were stoked. The waves were fun, not too big, not too small. They had shape and offered up sections to perform upon. Mother Nature was smiling – along with the rest of us.

These kids were as impressive out of the water as in it. Professional all the way, one young man having been knocked out in the quarter-finals personally congratulated his opponents, shaking their hands and complimenting them on a heat well surfed. Talent and manners – it doesn’t get any better than that.

To see this year’s results and find out how you can be a part of next year’s event, visit www.skullcandyozgromopen.com.au

Ness Moore (aka The Lioness https://thelioness.com.au/)

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