WESTWARD HO

 

It’s hard to describe the western suburbs of Sydney. I’ve been living here for over thirty five years and generating an accurate profile of what life’s like in the Red Rooster compound of Sin City is as difficult now as it ever has been.

Sydney’s sprawling nature gives the west a large stomping ground in terms of area and, up till now, the main limiting force has been the Blue Mountains. While it might not have the population of Los Angeles, Sydney does have the turf. And because of this size, portrait painting is problematic.

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking around Merrylands and filling in a few hours of my retirement time allocation geared towards social interactions. It’s part of my current therapy. What surprises me about Merrylands’ shops is the diversity of punters. It’s always had this feature but it takes direct contact to really feel it…. and I don’t do that enough. The increasing number of Afghani nosheries along the Merrylands Road strip is typical of the continuing change. There are people everywhere walking around with strollers, bags and walking sticks. If you were in possession of an activated tape recorder, there must be about twenty different languages that you’d capture on the stroll up to the old fruit mart and that’s only about three hundred metres from the station.

A skip over to the mighty mall places you in a demilitarised zone of people, cultures, noise and dress which neither challenge nor contrast with the status quo. Why? Because this is the scene as it is…..no more or no less. Check this out: I actually saw some female Muslim punters trying on new hijabs in some boutique and they didn’t even know that I had noticed. Civil disobedience, baby! But I’m pretty sure that they wouldn’t be too fussed. After all, this is Australia.

I’m always suspicious of citizens who tag ‘decay’ as the stimulus word for our suburbs and shopping centres. It’s not so much an economic descriptor but more a coded message for reaction to, and entitlement despite, the changing demographic. The use of public transport along the rail corridors winding through the west is to be feared and avoided at all costs. It’s certainly dangerous but only in terms of the blinkered thinking and inferior intelligence that such citizens demonstrate.

The problem that ‘real’ Australians push is at odds with what the western suburbs have always been. No amount of pining for the past will ever bring back a Camelot of privilege, entitlement and whiteness. The fact that much of this rubbish still inhabits the daily news cycles and political party platforms says more about an increasingly irrelevant and remnant sector of Oz society than the true foundations of our future.