I predict a riot

Today I'm off to Cronulla - a place Sydneysiders like to talk of fondly, where the beaches are said to be lovely and the restaurants very good.

The one negative most people mention is that it's a bit far out - around an hour by train from the city. A smaller number of people you ask about Cronulla will also mention it's more unpalatable reputation as the centre of Sydney's famous race riots in 2005.

I'm therefore interested to see this place for all of the above reasons. Not that I'm expecting to find a museum dedicated to the riots or do I intend to stop people in the street and talk about it, you understand...

"Excuse me, mate. I was wondering if you could direct me to where you boys duffed up all those darkies a few years ago. Are there any blood stained Australian flags still hoisted up I could take a photo of?"

The fact a race riot occurred between western white males who had been drinking and Lebanese muslims is not that much of a surprise. What seemed to captivate the world's media back in 2005 was where it happened - i.e. the beach.

People have such a stereotypical, and mostly accurate, image of Aussie beach life - surf, 'put another shrimp on the barby mate', cool beer and not a care in the world. The violent scenes of 2005 destroyed this Home and Away esque perception.

I was a bit shocked too at the time. You tend to think of an Aussie beach as somewhere you might be lucky to spend an alternative Christmas one day. In short, you think of it as a happy place.

So, what was Cronulla going to be like? Surely for a full-on race riot it had to be some kind of cross between Brixton and Blackpool, you would have thought.

As I come out of the train station following a very pleasant journey through the Sydney suburbs and nearby countryside, I feel I must have fallen asleep and somehow ended up in Christchurch. An elderly lady sells fruit from a small shop, there are some market traders selling books and young families heading off to the beach. For a laugh, I play 'I Predict a Riot' by the Kaiser Chiefs on my ipod and wander through the streets of this quiet, yet very beautiful, place and chuckle to myself that this was the scene of an internationally renowned racial disturbance little more than a year ago.

When I get down to the beach, it is dominated by happy surfers, a fair few pensioners and kids playing in the rock pools. I take a moment out from my political analysis of the place to relax and soak up the sun and glorious view.

So, how did this idyllic place become submerged in violence? How did this find itself bracketed with the Bronx?

It's actually an easier question to answer than you might think. There are some telling signs as I explore Cronulla, for although it has the appearance of a charming seaside resort, alongside all of this is a very obvious young, male Aussie presence that is far more full-on than the more relaxed beaches in Sydney I have been to.

I strike riot evidence gold when I come across a group of young lads wearing a pretty infamous t-shirt out here. It has the Australian flag resplendent across their chests, and beneath it the message 'If you don't love it, leave it'. This is targeted at Lebanese muslims, many of whom have attacked Australian society in much the same way people of the same faith have in other western countries. Cronulla's surrounding areas has a very large Lebanese population.

In some respects I could sympathise with the message on the t-shirt if it wasn't meant in such a racist way. By that I mean if you are so unhappy living somewhere, so disgusted by the lack of standards in society that you lock your children in the house at night and ban them from having Australian friends - as many muslim parents do - is it not better to be living somewhere a bit more in tune with your perspective on life? It can't be much fun hating your surroundings so much you lock yourself away from them in horror.

But, even if this might be the case, you get the feeling it isn't the real message the people wearing these t-shirts want to send out. Love it, loathe it, whatever - these guys would probably still rather you left it.

Call me old fashioned, but there is also something a little bit unsettling about people walking around in racist t-shirts suggesting the re-patriation of immigrants from the country. Perhaps if I don't like it I should leave it!

This whole t-shirt thing brings me on to my main point - the riots here were caused by a culture clash. The reason why this beach side resort erupted in violence had little to do with the 'they're stealing our jobs' mentality. It wasn't something that had poverty at its core. Aussies do not like anything or anyone that threatens their way of life and saw/see the 'Lebs' as just that. More than 200 people killed in the first Bali bomb in 2002 - 88 of them Australian - didn't help matters. Nor did reports of planned attacks in Sydney and Melbourne by extremists.

For their part, the local muslim population wasn't thrilled by Australia's 'shoulder to shoulder' stance with the UK and US over Afghanistan and Iraq...

The trigger for the riots was, apparently, unconfirmed reports of attacks on lifeguards by people of Middle Eastern origin (this isn't quite the moral equivalent of kiddie fiddling in Australia, but it's not that far off). Thousands then began to make their way to Cronulla to have a go at the 'Lebs'.

All of this should be taken in context - 31 per cent of people living and working in Sydney were not born in Australia, and on an overwhelming basis everyone gets on fine. There is, however, an undeniable sense of fear amongst the white 'Anglo' population of outsiders. This has been the case since the first settlers arrived here. It explains why the early Australian governments clung to the 'mother country' Britain like a child holding onto its parent in a unfamiliar environment, and why the current regime so values its relationship with America. The Aussies have from day one felt very threatened by anything that might jeopardise their way of life here.

That fear is one of the main reasons why the right-wing 'Liberal' party is successively returned to office in Federal Government elections, despite the Labor Party controlling every single State in the country. Anyway, I will discuss the strange world of Aussie politics in later posts - not least because there is an election here in New South Wales in two weeks.

Oh, it's Saturday night. Best head out and see what the evening throws at me in the bars and clubs of Sydney...