(no subject)
I’m proud to be an Australian. I always have been. I say mate. My diet consists of bbq’d meat and vegies. I own a pair of cheap rubber thongs bought from a supermarket. The first alcohol to ever touch my lips was from a VB can. I can trace my ancestry back to settlement. My family have “worked the land” for the same amount of time. I’ve got everlasting freckles from summers at ‘Nulla beach. I know the words to Advance Australia Fair (including the second verse) and Waltzing Matilda. I know what Waltzing Matilda actually means. I’m bloody Australian.
I’m being prosecuted for it.
I’ve lived in Rockdale all my life, if you don’t know it; it’s a pretty ethnic based community. 5mins from the famous Brighton-Le-Sands where the resounding doof doof echoes over two storey high white brick lion guarded houses and pebble gardens. Having lived here for so long I have had my fair share of been harassed for being a “Skippy” and an “Aussie bitch”. I’ve been pushed to the ground 5mins from my house because it would be fun to see the white girl squirm. Even after all that, I have never been scared to leave my house alone, day or night… Until now.
It has been two days since the Riots in Cronulla, Brighton and Maroubra (all within 20mins from my house) and I have been stopped, have had abused yelled at me and objects thrown at me more times then what would happen in 6 months. In 2 days! My mother has had the same walking home from work (who works in Brighton). My Dad (who lives in Brighton) can not go down the road of a night for fear of being smashed over the head with a baseball bat. I felt safer this morning walking through Redfern to work then I did walking to the bus stop. And what makes it worse is that this has come about because we decided to fight back and go after innocents ourselves. We lowered ourselves to the level of those people who attacked the two lifeguards. We in turn became what we fought so hard against.
Now I'm not turning on my own race, I agree something had to be done, as I said before I have lived with this prejudice against me most of my life and I too have wanted to rise and fight. I just want to put in the perspective of someone who is now living with the repercussions of Sunday. It’s all fine and dandy for the Aussies and the wogs to drive into this area with their pride flying high and protect their way of life and when they are done they can drive off home and feel a job was well done but what about those who cant ‘drive on home’ and escape the beach and the riots? Does my family move from “Wogdale” to the shire now so we can be with our own kind and escape this? Or do we live worried that this is the day that brick they threw connects? When does it stop?
When does it become everyone else’s fight?