Tourists blasted for using road as car park to catch iconic Aussie view
The chaotic scenes for sunrise at Byron Bay have been described as a 'democratic takeover' of the road, while others were infuriated by the 'entitlement'.
Tourists have made a desperate dash to catch sight of an iconic Aussie view by abandoning their cars on a coastal road, leaving it littered like a vehicle version of Tetris. And unsurprisingly, locals were infuriated.
Cars and campers were left along the road leading up to Byron Bay's famous lighthouse on Tuesday morning with many eager to catch the sunrise after days of rain. The parking was initially orderly but vehicles quickly began to park on the two-way road leading up to the landmark, with one lane lined with cars before the other started to fill up, completely blocking road access.
"I think one person starting parking there and the rest followed," Byron Bay resident Hélène König told Yahoo News. "Most of the crowd was really young, early 20s mostly."
The Cape Byron lighthouse car park is "usually closed until 7 or 8 [am]" so tourists decided to initiate a "democratic takeover" of the road in order to tick off the view from their bucket list.
Tourists 'refused' to move for local blocked in
A local man was caught up in the chaos after leaving his car in one of the available parking bays only to be completely blocked in by multiple vehicles parked behind him.
"An older guy started chatting to me... he said he was in his car that was parked on a normal parking spot and he got parked in. He got out and told the young crew that came out of their car to move it but they refused because they wanted to catch the sunrise," König said. "He was just waiting around for them to come back."
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Online the tourists were branded as "entitled" and called "imbeciles", with locals believing they should be fined for blocking road access, questioning what would have happened in an emergency.
However, others pointed to the larger issue at play — believing more needs to be done to offer adequate parking space for the popular attraction.
"[It] needs a regular shuttle from one of the car parks further out," one man remarked.
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