The Backpacker is Dead

Oscar Schwartz travels to Byron Bay to conduct a post-mortem

The backpacker’s hostel has disappeared. Or at least it’s not where I last saw it. Right here, next to the supermarket. I remember it well. I was seventeen and barefoot, listening to a topless French backpacker who was alternately playing the guitar and the didgeridoo. He was singing: “realise your real eyes in Byron Bay.” Now all I can see is a demolition site and a poster advertising a new luxury apartment complex called “Bohemian.” Underneath someone has scrawled: “Fuck off corpo scum! Fuck West Byron!”

I have been in Byron Bay for three days searching for backpacker life but so far not a trace. I saw no MacPacs rotating around the airport luggage conveyor belt, but sleek, hard shell Rimowa suitcases. In town, the streets were empty of busking Frenchmen and in their place sauntered well-groomed Brits wearing three-quarter length distressed jeans and white sparkling Air Force 1s. At the beach, there were no fire twirlers, but influencers working on their supernatural bodies. I did see some traveler vans down by the foreshore. I caught a glimpse of one done up like a Design Files apartment—pot plants and a gas oven and a white tiled splashback. A toned couple lay on the bed, covered in linen throws, gazing at the beach, where every morning two red diggers moved sand from one part of the shore to another, “to make it look perfect for the coming summer,” one of the workers told me.