Sydney’s beaches were under marshall law this weekend. Police roadblocks were set so that anyone wishing to travel to Cronulla, Maroubra, Coogee, Bondi etc were subject to indiscriminate searches. If you drove to the beach on Sunday, you were under suspicion.
For those not completely up to speed with current Australian news, this is all due to to the recent happenings at Cronulla beach where a group of 5000 ‘anglo’ Australians decided to rid their beach of the ‘lebs’ as well as anyone that looked like they might be Lebanese. There were many disgusting scenes played out in the nations media which continued on through the week with continued violence and reprisals from both camps. A full rundown can be found at wikipedia.
On the surface, this appears clearly to be a dispute centred around race and indeed the escalation of violence through the week has been fuelled by militant racist groups. However it did not begin as a race war but rather, a turf war. And the territory being fought over - Australia’s sacred ground - The Beach.
Bereft of successful public spaces, town squares or campi, our place of public gathering and promenade is the beach; the long stretch of unbroken sand, horizon and surf.
It is the antithesis of the European model of public space where the square acts as a respite from the tight medieval grain of the city yet is still hemmed in on all sides by dense built form. The European square is a civic space, centred around trade, veneration of religious buildings and the occasional fiesta. The last thing Australians need is a respite from density, our markets are located in giant shopping malls and we do not have fiestas so much as a general disposition to lazing about in the sun.
Thus the beach is a public space devoted to the pleasures of the flesh and the sun. The beach has, in the double-speak of today’s groovy workplace agendas, a flat, non-heirachical structure - open and egalatarian. Sure, the ’surf’ may be a different story - where there is a constant power struggle between board riders, life guards, body bashers, goat boaters and body boarders - but on the sand the world is free to do as it chooses.
Its problem, in comparison with the European model and highlighted by the recent hostilities, is that it occupies the fringe rather than the centre. It may be open to all, but in a city like Sydney with a mammoth sprawl westwards, it is certainly geographically closer to the few. This separation of iconic public space from the centre of the cities population breeds a resentment in those physically separated from it and fierce protectionism in those who would claim it as their own.
This is a difficult problem to solve. It is unlikely that coastal beaches are going to spring up west of Parramatta and Sydney’s west, no matter how many motorways that are built, will always be physically divorced from the coastline.
The roadblocks set up last weekend enforced this geographic division and I suspect only strengthened the resentment. Granted, they did seize some pretty nasty gear, and there were no reports of further violence on the beaches, however this is a bandaid solution and an insidious one at that. 2005 has been a bad year for civil rights in Australia and now in the name of protecting our beaches you can add the ability for the police to lock down suburbs and search and confiscate vehicles for whatever reason to the list.
On the surface, order may have been restored, but this is at the price of turning the beach into gated and exclusive community.