New Year's Eve, Redfern Style

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Ah, Sydney. In the summertime it can be an easy place to like. Yet there have never been more reasons to leave.

The average morning speed on our main roads is half the 60 kmh speed limit. When you try to escape for the weekend, it can take an hour just to get to Hornsby, Sutherland or Springwood. A taxi from the airport to the Hills incurs more than $15 in tolls and fees, making the cost of anything at the airport seem reasonable.

The only metro we will see in the next 10 years is the well-dressed male sort, and there are more than enough of those already. And we will never agree on whose backyard is the best location for a second airport.

This month in the Cities of Opportunity index, Sydney ranked behind Sao Paulo for transport. I have been to Sao Paulo. It's like the set of Bladerunner; I loved it. But the traffic is so bad the rich take helicopters to lunch.

No other Australian city does parking police, snobs, violent drunks, ice addicts, road rage and tossers like Sydney. Even Oscar Humphries, the erstwhile Sydney tosser-turned Australian Spectator editor, now has the insight to say this to Good Weekend: "I couldn't have done what I'd done - got all these pieces written about me - anywhere but Sydney, because really I wasn't doing much at the time, I was just there. This is a city that devotes an inordinate amount of space to, you know, launches for hair curling irons."

The baby boomers created the seachange phenomenon, coined the phrase and made the TV series, but there is now an unprecedented confluence of factors tempting Generations X and Y to make one themselves.

In the front yards of Avoca and Mollymook and Blackheath there is a new must-have garden feature - the For Sale sign. Judging by the sea of placards, holiday homes are the first ballast being thrown overboard from the asset portfolios of nervous bankers and child-care entrepreneurs blown about by the economic storm. With the first home owner's grant doubled to $14,000 and topped up to $24,000 by the NSW Government for new-built houses, it can only be a matter of time before a seachange becomes quite seriously affordable. Even food and culture snobs are running out of excuses: drive from Sydney to Orange and you pass seven chef's hats, according to the Herald's 2008 Good Food Guide.

About 25,000 Sydneysiders leave each year, making Sydney's net migration to other states (mostly Queensland) more than 50 times that of Victoria. But most of them are still 40-and 50-somethings with families...

Joel Gibson.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/opinion/between-sea-and-country-air-city-exercises-its-pull/2008/12/21/1229794242349.html

There was absolutely no explanation for what had happened. Colin is back in hospital; on his last legs. More than a hundred miles away, he was helpless to help. The wild thoughts that had ballooned out across the dank, over-heated suburb, the fetid air, all their thought bubbles coalesced together in a marching charade. He had wanted out, it was true. The profound depression he had brought upon himself lifted; inspired by the network of dysfunctional, caring people. Oh how much he wanted them to go. Was it true he had been planted here; and then his own coding wiped to hide the trace. Those balloons were almost impossible to describe; flushing out across the cars; rising over the terrace roofs, enveloping the rats which still ran up and down the tree outside his bedroom window.

Four a.m. on the first day of the year; and everything he had ever worked for had vanished and he was cosseted in a ball of laughter; watching the police banked across the top of the block. They were two, sometimes three deep. Opposite, the police cars were stacked along the road edge, outside Redfern Police Station. He was shattered inside; so shattered he knew he could never recover, not now, not this time, not ever. The music was fantastic, these master musicians playing for the tiny audience of stragglers who had shown up for Brigette's party. Bridge, as we all called her, was skinny from the alcohol, bubbling from ecstasy, marked at the frontier. We sat on her balcony and smoked cigarettes. Not many people had come; and she was disappointed. All dressed up and nowhere to go. We didn't point it out. Where is everybody? The little band of three or four, organised especially for the party, played well enough to have caught the rapt attention of hundreds, packed in country halls, applauding, purposeful, part of this glorious life, glorious nation, glorious city.

Except there was nothing glorious about this place, not any more. The Public Order and Riot Squad police were there, as were the Tactical Response Group. We could see everything, too frightened to go and check it out in person. He could hear shouts, the sounds of smashing bottles. Every now and then the police would go in a wave down to the block,, down and back, advance retreat. This very spot had been the scene of some of the city's worst rioting, and the police were taking no chances, not this time, not on the first day of the year. It was good to write again. He had so wanted to record everything, to create something beautiful, to make a difference. Even here, on this balcony, as the minutes clicked towards five a.m. and the police readied themselves for another foray into the Block, the words cascaded through his head, urgent, lyrical, driven with desire. Alongside the police party goers gathered in drunken little knots outside the station, waiting for the trains to start up. They were young, full of excitement, sweaty from their party drugs, make up and hair falling every which way, flushed with expectation they would finally get their rocks off when their trains arrived and, droppped at their destinations in the barely dawn, fell through their doors and embraced; fulfilling the pornographic movies which ran in all their heads.

Far off the world was splintering. Terrorism and the flavour of the Middle East was in all their living rooms, flickering on screens. Everything was open to us now. He couldn't breathe deep enough, sigh long enough. He couldn't find someone to love, not enough to wipe away all that had happened, the final gasps of pain as he was beaten once again. Now an old man, homeless at the base of giant billboards, he couldn't even protest at their indifference. It was New Year's Eve. They had a right to party. That his own life had fallen apart was not their concern. He was laughing at Bridge, who was chasing Gersch down the steps. Gersch was one of the princes of dysfunction, intoxicating, intoxicated, as she recovered from Mick telling her to bugger off and get a younger man, have babies, be happy, go live in the burbs. Instead she found Gersch, and completely adored him, could run her hands across his flat working stomach and kiss every sweaty, lovely little hair as she wound up higher and kissed him on the lips; and now chased him down the stairs in a barely mock attempt at capture.

There was a shrill whistle. The police were gathering again. There are left wing governments at local, state and federal level. All of the talk is of tolerance and diversity, compassion towards those who are different. On the streets the police raise their truncheons and tower over the hopeless gang of beggars and street alcoholics who are the public face of The Block. They don white gloves as they search their belongings, for fear of contamination. The sniffer dogs spread fear. The sky lightens. They daren't go near.

At work next day; amidst the general round of press conferences, the feeding of the pack, the manipulation of reality, the creation of an entirely false public discourse, the city officials crowed about the wonderful success of the night; New Year's Eve and the fireworks display on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, world famous not just for visual spectacle itself, millions of dollars burning as colours cascaded down from the bridge and the bobbing boats on the harbour were lit with the reflected glow of the fireworks, the red, the white and the blue, the crowds gasping in awe and appreciation. But its geographical location; as one of the first major cities to begin celebrating the New Year, made it world famous, picked up and relayed in packages around the globe. The mayor, Clover Moore, batty left, always politically correct, hands off ignorant of the brutality of the police, the oppression of the dispossessed. On her watch, under her nose. We live in the greatest city in the world, she declared.

Only 70 people had been arrested for public disorder, resisting arrest, affray, hundreds of tonnes of garbage had already been cleared from the streets by the 10am press conference, the Opera House glowed in too bright colours and the harbour was more glistening, more depth in its colouring, than ever. But these things were minor. She praised the public for their good behaviour, the police for putting their lives on the line, garnering considerable overtime as they went. She applauded the handiwork of the event manager, the handsomely paid artistic designers, expressed the city's gratitude for their success.

What was happening in Redfern between four and five a.m., he asked.

Well I live in Redfern, and nothing was happening that I am aware of. I have not been briefed on any major disturbance.

It was as if the riot police, those battle lines foraying down into The Block, the drunken shouts, the broken bottles, the aborigines running for cover in the network of broken streets, it was as if none of it had ever happened.

Later, at a police press conference held at the headquarters of the Roads and Traffic Authority, he asked the same question; what was happening in Redfern between four and five a.m.?

The Acting Commissioner, her future well assured and well promoted, looked him directly in the eye, surprised by the question in the midst of all of the talk of the event's success.

There was a minor altercation between two people, she said.

He raised an eyebrow. It took dozens of police for that, the riot squad, the vans.

She repeated her answer, said that it was a standard response, the police responded in groups for their own safety. There had been no major incidents.

The gap between the official versions and the scenes on the street could hardly be more stark. Where were we heading, communist Russia?

A minor altercation between two people?

The Commissioner clearly did not want to dwell on the subject; nothing must mar the official success story, the seamless event, the happy city. She pointed to the next journalist; and answered their harmless question in full. He knew not to persist, to let the official version ride.

And so the newspapers, the radio, the television, all reported on the glowing success of the event. He wasn't going to fight this one. He wasn't going to single handedly tear away the veil of secrecy.

He thanked the Lord for the creation of such a beautiful world. A new life, a new day, he had survived. Deeply dysfunctional, deeply inspired, he retreated back into the comforting network of crazies, he shrugged off the depression which had eaten at him throughout 2008; and he shuddered, deep down, at the gaps in reality, the increasing government control, the layers of fascism, the Soviet style world being brought to their door, in this glittering place, this glittering harbour, the multiple reflections on the shiny water, amidst the wealthy yachts and bobbing dinghies. All was not well. All was turning into a lie.