Coogee resident becomes full on nimby by complaining about too many people at the beach

OPINION: Columnist David Wood moved to Coogee in August and now thinks he owns the joint. He has a message for all those visiting on the weekends — “f**k off, we’re full”.

People should get the hell out of the author’s suburb.

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F**k off we’re full.

There is nothing else to say.

I live in Coogee and have lived in Coogee for a long time. Well, five months, but anyway I am claiming possession.

And it relatively quiet and I had a beach which I’ve never had before and there was not too much fuss.

And then one day it got hot and a mass of people climbed out of trap doors in the street and filled up the footpaths and forced me to shop in Randwick instead.

I couldn’t even see there was a beach anymore.

So I became sullen and angry like a child.

I even went to Parramatta for New Year’s Eve because I thought it would be quieter — and my friend’s have airconditioning.

I chose to live in Coogee because I did want to live near the beach. But my exorbitant rent while not getting me airconditioning only provides me roads and rubbish collection and no right to say who comes into the suburb.

And I do see that natural world as community held thing.

I don’t like the idea that having enough money to live somewhere beautiful buys you the exclusion of others.

Coogee Beach has made the news recently for the 10,000 or so punters who went there, and drank there on Christmas Day and left a lot of rubbish — 15 tonnes of it apparently.

My mate said they should have just plonked a few skip bins out in the park. And perhaps that is sensible.

But anyway, after bringing in noon to 4pm drinking restrictions on December 13, Randwick Council banned drinking in public places for the summer in a reaction to Christmas.

Not a sign Australians generally like to see or even perhaps understand even if we could read proper. Picture: Daniel Aarons

Mayor Noel D’Souza said “poor and inappropriate behaviour of a few” forced council to ban grog.

“It is disappointing we have to take such a strong stance, but we need to reassure the community that they can feel safe when visiting and enjoying the jewel in the crown of Randwick City, Coogee Beach.”

According to police there were three arrests.

Coogee Surf Life Saving Club governor Tony Waller said there had been “no warning” about the party, which quickly became too hard to control and lifeguards left the area about 7.30pm “concerned for their safety’.

“We had a (alcohol) ban after 4pm, which was literally unenforceable,” he said.

But as it has been pointed out, a total grog ban is one involving little nuance.

NSW Liberal Senator David Leyonhjelm said it signified a failure of both policy and policing.

“It is authoritarian, in that it seeks to address a problem through prohibition. It’s comparable to banning dogs to prevent crap on the footpath.”

“(The ban) is also a failure of policing, because it shows that the current laws regarding littering are not being enforced,” he said.
He is a Libertarian and I’m surprised he even wants laws around littering. But he also didn’t offer suggestions about what could be done.
All all the Irish’s fault a British person has told me. And I’m happy to lay blame on a particular nationality.

The author is a bit concerned that this poster was put up in Coogee because of him. Picture: David Wood

I don’t have strict prescriptions either but I have lived in the Northern Territory where there is always talk of ‘stopping the rivers of grog”.

While the grog in the NT is more in rivers than anywhere else in Australia, I have long thought about what Alice Springs medical campaigner John Boffa from the People’s Alcohol Action Coalition has said about alcohol.

And I am attempting to reconstruct what he had said quite eloquently and forcefully.

But roughly after Aboriginal people were granted the right to drink in pubs like other Australians he saw it as part of a turning point, a right had been won.

But years after and discussing with Aboriginal women the destruction of some drinking he began to see more fully the responsibilities and the privilege that is drinking in general.

Nothing a few skip bins wouldn’t fix perhaps.

Alcohol really isn’t a civil rights issue in my view.

And this isn’t about Aboriginal people and drinking because very generally we Australians — myself included — engage in some pretty destructive drinking and that is not as nice to watch from the outside as it can seem from the perspective of the one doing it.

I have read that in the early years of European Australian settlement the immigrants drank more per head of population than any point in human history.

And so I am a hypocrite because I have drunk heavily and with abandon at times with not thought about the consequences. And maybe nobody could have said anything to me that would have changed that.

But I wish someone had tried. And while it goes to personal responsibility I do now have a much greater education on grog that I was raised with.

I do wish Australia had a different drinking culture really.

But I also do feel alienated and vulnerable often being around particularly drunk people.

But anyway, back to my rabid point, don’t all these people understand that Coogee is mine now?

I move in August. I pay the stupid rent. The suburb is mine and may as well always have been.

My ancestors, or at least some whities, stole Coogee off the Eora Nation fair and square.

I have a lot to complain about.