What I can do is have some balls and make my own decisions to best protect my passengers and crew.
I don't disagree with your points and no judgement on your decisions to call in sick as I am sure many do. However the only person you are protecting is yourself. Another crew will still operate the service and be exposed to the vagaries of Ballina. My ultimate mitigation is if it gets too busy is to just divert to the Gold Coast. So far I haven't arrived at that point. I have a few other things that I do to mitigate the threat. No visual circuits, no RNP approaches on VMC days and no taxiing on runways conducting checks and running checklists.