Ballina Information Blog

Once again it looks like another weekend of poor surfing conditions.
The swell is about a metre and coming from the north-east.
The wind is strong from the north, so we can expect flatter conditions over the weekend.
A southerly change is predicted for late on Sunday, with winds turning easterly on Monday.
Best spots: Maybe South Wall if [...]

Lennox Head residents have welcomed this week’s news that Ballina Shire Council has allocated funding of up to $5 million for a community centre.
The council will call tenders for a detailed design and documentation of the community centre.
However, the council will seek further input from Lennox Head residents to determine if they want the centre [...]

Ballina Shire Council this week moved to improve the Ballina-Byron Gateway airport.
The council voted to employ specialist aviation consultants Schreiber Hamilton Architecture to look into building a separate arrivals hall.
The council also will adopt short-term measures to make the current arrivals hall more spacious and safer.
This will include extending the baggage carousel.

Research into acid sulphate soils – a problem plaguing the Richmond River – a project designed to increase the sale of Australian milk in the Asian market and another promoting innovation in the film music industry are among four Southern Cross University projects to receive national funding through the Australian Research Council.
The other projects which received funding, [...]

Tickets to the annual Premier’s Christmas Gala Concerts at the Sydney Entertainment Centre on Wednesday 6 December 2006 are now available, Member for Ballina Don Page said today.
Mr Page said local seniors who were travelling to Sydney and would like to attend either the 10.30am or 2.30pm concert could obtain free tickets from his electorate [...]

When Jan Barling lost her teenage son to cancer, she came face to face with the glaring inadequacies of the health system in dealing with the special social and emotional needs of teenagers.
The Southern Cross University researcher discovered that her son, Anthony, like all teenage cancer patients, was caught between two worlds.
Anthony was too old [...]

A southerly change which blew through mid-afternoon on Friday holds the key to weekend wave conditions.
After a few days of northerlies, there’s still a reasonable east-north-east swell to a metre, so if the southerly cleans it up, look for some clean beach breaks on Saturday.
Hopefully the wind will stay from the south for the weekend.
Unfortunately, [...]

‘Should Australia introduce a formal citizenship test?’ is a question Northern Rivers residents are being asked to consider at an upcoming public seminar at Southern Cross University.
The free seminar is being held in response to the Federal Government’s recently released discussion paper ‘Australian Citizenship: much more than a ceremony’.
‘Testing Citizenship: a public point of view [...]