When I was growing up, the water-belt of Sydney’s eastern suburbs was breathlessly advertised to the world as iconic Australia but seemed a million miles from my world of western Sydney. Bondi Beach was hard to access from the western suburbs by public transport, so a train line was proposed in 1996. It was stopped by a local brigade of NIMBYs who feared giving “westies” access, arguing they’d bring violence to the area. As with so much white anxiety, racism was framed as a concern over crime.
Best to learn how to swim first, I thought. I was the westie the NIMBY locals couldn’t lock out, taking a winding 40-minute bus from Central Station to Coogee Beach to sit on the sand and stare at the water. I once overheard another pair of westies who’d also made the long migration. “We’re gonna stay the whole damn day – took us long enough to get here,” they said, laughing as they unpacked, taking in every perfect minute as a memory to store away for later.
I could ace every exam and outwit the Anglos at tests, but swimming required body memory that I imagined was passed down invisibly in infant-acclimatising ocean and pool holidays. Years earlier, in 2002, a caller had rung incendiary radio broadcaster Alan Jones to complain of a “Muslim women-only session” at Auburn pool. The irate caller claimed the pool was closed off so Muslim women could swim in their “robes”.Jones replied caustically, “What? The pool is closed – it’s a public pool – it’s closed to everybody else except Muslim women? And they go in there and dive in, in all their clobber?” The response was swift.
This is where the new racism came in. It was like the unpopular kids being sidelined by the queen bees, who invoked their financial and cultural dominance to keep the best of the lunch room. Water has often been an elite space – for boating, yachting, beach holidays. It was what annoyed me about so many breathless accounts by Australian journalists of their water love: they were unaware that what they deemed a universal Australian experience was in fact a deeply contested space.
Priests of Varanasi use holy rivers to sanctify believers. In Australia, the beach is our secular religion. Watching the sun rising over the water and sinking behind the horizon felt like being close to God in a way that was as spiritual as walking into a mosque. I removed my shoes in respect and entered the water as my most bare self. I was anointed and baptised anew.
I don’t get it…my parents took us to the pools and the beach…we didn’t give a shit about other people…maybe her parents wanted excuses not to do it from cultural reasons..maybe their own insular mentality was the cause…
“I could ace every exam and outwit the Anglos at tests” She’s racist. All I got from this, is that she thinks she’s better than “Anglos”, supports segregation, compared herself to indigenous Australians and is a capitalism hating Marxist Charming
Who told her that?
Invasions enemies in Australia Declared war zone is a horrid lie and doing that to the kids-growing up in a country their parents are at war with and SLAUGHTERING 1990-2022!
Told by WHOM?
I bet she wasn’t
By Christians or Agnostics?