Ten years ago I felt I could understand why people gathered at Cronulla beach to protest on the day of the riots. I felt I could relate to the frustrations at the beach, because of what I had seen and experienced there.
I grew up in the St George district on the cusp of Sutherland Shire. I didn’t quite belong there, but I desperately wanted to. I spent endless days at the beach, and at parties in the Shire. My dark, curly (and at the time) unnecessarily long hair was an obvious display of my Greek heritage. Once I even tried to bleach it. Unfortunately, I used lemon juice and sun-in and ended up looking more like Ronald McDonald than a cool surfer.
The summers were always about the beach. Almost every day we would go down to Cronulla and swim and surf.
We were, on occasion, hassled by groups of young men. They could have been Italian, or Macedonian or Greek or Lebanese, we wouldn’t have known. And as the beach grew more crowded in the early days of summer, it felt as though the “problem” was getting worse. I was hassled. My friends were hassled. This would range from silly name-calling (“fucking Aussie cunts” was a favourite), to pushing and shoving and on rare occasions to threats of assault. And many of the young women we spent time with were hassled. Catcalls and aggressive approaches would often occur.
So it came as little surprise when the text messages advertising “wog and leb” bashing day were circulated in December 2005. Many people I was friends with at the time received them. And when I saw them, I shook my head, but I didn’t outright condemn them.
To be clear, I didn’t want to riot. I was in no way interested in violence, and I didn’t go to the beach that day. I was shocked by what happened there. But all I could see was a battle between two opposing sides; those of us who wanted to enjoy the beach, and those who were invading the beach. I found it difficult to acknowledge the inherent racism that surrounded that.
I believed I had a lot of cause to see the world this way. The day after the riots, revenge attacks were orchestrated by a number of groups in response. One of my friends at the time texted me. Her car windows had been smashed in when it was parked at the front of her house. She said she was scared “the lebs” were going to hurt her family.
That summer at the beach was a truly eerie time. The surf was small. Most of the time we just lay on the beach, dipping occasionally into the water. But the presence of police was extraordinary. There were probably more police than visitors. Every day, vans full of officers in dark jump suits would unpack in the car park at North Cronulla. They had seconded a number of lifesaver buggies, which were now adorned with police. Sometimes they wore shorts as they ambled across the beach. They patrolled all through the day.
In the days and weeks following, many people wanted to know what it was like in Cronulla, and why it all happened. Although I never defended the violence that summer, I told them that I understood why it had happened. It was “us” and “them”. It was an attempt to excuse events that my 15-year-old brain could not see past.
Over time I began to realise this. My views changed. The world was a far more complex place than I could imagine, and Australia had many secret prejudices that I was yet to discover. And people suffered because of it.
I came to realise that, although I never felt like I was racist (and I was actually from a minority background) I had allowed my prejudices to surreptitiously take hold. I had been assimilated into a very insular culture. And I was very much part of the problem. By reducing the tensions as a conflict between two opposing forces I had held out the “darker skinned” interlopers of the shire as alien and other. And that was quite wrong.
There is no excuse for harassing someone enjoying a day at the beach – whatever the colour of your skin – and I’m not defending the people who harassed me and my friends. But a few cases of harassment don’t justify a fully fledged race war.
I hope that the scores of other young men and women who went down to Cronulla and took part in the riots did so because they were too young to understand – like I was – what was wrong about the way they saw Cronulla. And that, looking back, they recognise that what they did was very wrong.
Some won’t. And not all of them were young. The protest planned for Saturday shows there are clearly some in the community who still hold great prejudice.
So 10 years on I will, this time around, be going down to a rally at Cronulla. But I certainly won’t be going to join them – I’ll be there to report on it. And I hope that in time they will see that their hate and prejudice just can’t stand.
