Relations of Power

The relationships between culture and power that I come across during my filed trip are that the real estate development in Coffs harbor is largely restricted by the local council and aboriginal community.

Recently, the economic situation in Coffs is terrible. Employment rate in this harbor is not the best in NSW. More over, some improvements have been made over the years but still a lot of young people from Coffs prefer to move to other city hunting for jobs. The research was based on three Harbors. During the filed trip, we went to one of the famous tourism attraction that is Coffs harbor jetty, Mutton bird island jetty bridge and Jetty Street. These are among the most attractive sites. They are the three main locations that attract people. During the field trip, I found that there is not any motel located in the jetty area. The only place that accept travelers are the Yha hostel. Despite attracting people, they open for backpacker. Most of the motel and resort are set up in the city center and park beach. This makes Jetty beach more attractive to the local resident and the national and the international travelers who are either staying in the city or the resort far away from the city center. There also exist strong power struggles between the local indigenous community, and the housing development investors, as a lot of recent development proposal around jetty are rejected by the local aboriginal community.

The indigenous culture has a significant influence in Coffs harbor. Most of them prefer to keep Coffs harbor as the way it is, they do not want to say some substantial development to make it became another international travel hotspot.  The majority of the redevelopment proposals within jetty and Coffs area is rejected. For example, there has been a debate that we should cut down the bush land in between jetty for shore and the beach. This was to make the area more attractive and get a clear view of the ocean .On the other hand; other people think that clearing these bushes will cause floods to run over the jetty damaging local business.

A big airport at the harbors was another main project that had been proposed. This port was to serve the purpose of transporting people from the overseas without having to change flights .This project was also rejected by the local aboriginal with the reason being that they did not want to cut down trees for the creation of place to build the port. These acts have raised many questions amongst many people (Danaher, 2000). Many wonder whether tourism benefits are for all or for the minority groups in cities where the well doing business is tourism. The official version of things is that they are’ working in our interests, and taking care of us.

The investors feel powerless; a lot of the local businesses are struggling to survive since the last Coffs rally that was held in the last year. This rally aimed at boosting the local economy, but it lastly got to disappoint many due to the lack of proper management that existed between its leaders. According to the research done by Dr Arianne Rei, ``There was a degree of disappointment directed towards the organizers of the Rally as many of the businesses did not think the amount of people expected to come eventuated.” also with the recent successful of port Macquarie and Byron bay on tourism are slowly putting Coffs harbor out of business, believe if the council wants to keep Coffs harbor as tourism city then some change of policy is required.