Asbestos and chrome

Posted on May 17, 2023 by Babelfishing

Warilla is the houso suburb where you get more bang for your buck according to the real-estate ads, draped like itchy blankets over ‘concrete deals’ and ‘below median prices’.

This spacious family home in its peaceful and convenient location, for example, is a mere $670,000, starting price only:

That edict only applies the western edge though, where the town tapers out towards the lake. Closer to the pounding surf of the South Pacific, the prices are not as benign. With its as yet ‘unverified balcony’, the pile on Little Lake Crescent is a cool $2.45mill:

Supreme coastal glamour with a uniquely versatile floor plan, this top-drawer residence nestled directly opposite one of the South Coast’s most known beaches and footsteps to Little Lake foreshore, and waterside parklands. An exclusive statement in contemporary style, the property showcases an array of premium appointments guaranteed to amaze. Entertaining is of first-class caliber, and embraces multiple family and entertaining options including a spacious lounge and dining zone finished in neutral tones flowing to a wide balcony commanding those majestic water views.

Sic-kening content aside, the marble tone and neutral ‘fusion of luxury and lifestyle convenience’ DO look directly out at the ocean, if you squint past the dead tree and property eyesore.

Just shy of Shellharbour, and deep in the straggling suburbs of the Gong, Warilla is a curious place. The local Chinese restaurant sports a pseudo temple roofline and majestic cement arches: it is closed indefinitely, however.

Granny flats and troopies line streets prosaically named Veronica, Dave, Jason and Anne, Terry, Brian and Raymond. Joan is a personal favourite, her tin rooves and verdant edges a swan dive into yesteryear.

Across the main road, things are less quaint, Grimmet and Spofforth Streets carve deep grooves into an overactive imagination that conjures underground criminal activity and latent despair. But the blocks are as big…

A mobility scooter flies past, its transportation executive trailing ALDI bags and grim determination to make headway on the only roundabout for 10 miles. On the bumper bar, a sticker reads:

Your political correctness offends me

Which is apt. I suspect the Tin Lid and I might be highly offensive to some, lefties on the loose on an Easter weekend devoid of eggs, carrots or commitment.

This place is liminal, caught between cause and effect. Flagrant ad copy spruiks a realm far removed from the asbestos bungalows and tank traps, from clutches of boardriders blowing horns into the wind, and pokies at the pub, their meaty clatter heard streets away.

Its raw edges are powerfully beautiful – a sand-blasted fringe that stretches to an ocean horizon, and a salted lake that cradles this spit of land in its embrace, full of story and lore – but at its heart, Warilla is pockmarked and sore, unable to reason with a future unchosen by its residents.

At Windang, sentinel structures dominate the horizon, placed with intent to mark a shared place, a dog beach where canine and human partner in their shared distaste for rangers and leashed areas, the air bristling with barking joy and the spray of sand, a tribe at play.

But it falls heavily into the one-careful-owner trope. This pristine Country is what attracts the development that circles – like a dingo on its prey – ready to capitalise on the ‘untouched potential’ it offers.

The traditional custodians of the land surrounding what is now known as Lake Illawarra are the Wadi Wadi people, part of the Dharawal Nation. Jubborsay, as it is known, is a place of spirits, a place to meet, eat, birth and die, burial sites and middens flanking the water’s edge.

The name Illawarra is derived from various adaptions of eloura, or allowrie; illa, wurra, or warra: all refer to ‘a generally pleasant place near the sea’, which seems like a singularly white reinterpretation. It is ‘generally pleasant’, but this belies the powerful undertones that curl around you like tendrils of hair on a blowy day, tickling your subconscious, demanding it takes notice.

It won’t be long before the tatty authenticity of this forgotten community, with its rich Dreaming and proud history, is replaced with an expensive veneer, one that ousts anyone who can’t afford it.

Generational homes on wide blocks will disappear, tended greenery will be forfeited, and the light will change as it is swallowed by buildings that reach for the sky.

And these childhood blocks, with their triangle rooves and strip of green by the gutter, will go.

The writing is on the wall just a few kays up the road. Frasers Property at Shell Cove is developing The Waterfront, and asking us to ‘set a course for luxury living’.

Like a clipper wallowing in dead water, the metaphor is insistent, nautical themes bedecking timber stanchions, caramel-and-sea-salt gelato flogged to the highest bidder.

The litany of advertorial is loud:

Here you can enjoy a harbourside lifestyle in a stunning natural environment with an array of amenity on your doorstep. The world-class Shellharbour Marina, The Waterfront Dining Precinct and The Waterfront Tavern are all open. Imagine strolling along boardwalks surrounding the marina to shops, playgrounds and in 2025 a state-of-the-art community centre, library, visitors information centre. In 2025 there will be a stunning new Crowne Plaza hotel at The Waterfront. This is the opportunity to live metres away from unrivalled amenity not found anywhere else on the NSW South Coast.

Imagine the unrivaled amenity, she mutters with a hint of Kerrigan-esque irony. Imagine a state-of-the-art community centre…

Amid spanking new builds and sharply demarked 50-zones, life here is sanitised and a world away from Warilla and her renegade residents. The kid and I came here for seals (alleged to flump their salty weight on slick pontoons and bark menacingly at timid landlubbers), but we are met with linen smocks and squealing children on motorised toys, fluffy lap dogs and maniacal seagulls. At least there is one constant.

The digital download is less prosaic: masterplans, aerial construction updates, property guides and mortgage calculators paper the air, chasing buy-now die-later rhetoric full of ‘lifestyle opportunities’ and ‘last-ever lots’.

It leads me to question how this ‘unbeatable lifestyle’ is better than what Wal from Lake Entrance Road – to the west of Shellharbour Road, the ‘bad bit’ – has.

Wal’s coastal dream has been his reality for over 30 years. His hard-earned, deeply loved fibro is an asbestos castle. Just a few hundred metres from the sea and cradled in the swell of community, it’s a crucible for his family’s memories, steeped in a wealth far richer than a Warrigal new build, shiny with chrome and vanilla scented.

Frankly, Wal says he just can’t understand the fuss…

Retirement in excelsior

Posted on October 16, 2019 by Babelfishing

A land beset by falls and gods, Burrawang is coping the only way it knows how – by coating the paths with pristine white gravel and topiary-ing the trees…

At first glance, this one-street strip is standard country fare: pub? Check. Butcher? Check. Rusted utes and verge-grazing wallabies? Hang on. No. Where are the long-downed soldiers of the road, decrepit hulks that double as kiddy playthings and brown-snake hatching spots? Where are the drought-riven wobblies who have learnt to survive by nibbling the chrysanthemums? Where, in fact, is all the country?

A note on the tastefully curated village website reads:

First settled in 1862, the village of Burrawang is nestled in the very heart of the Highlands. It is a village that is proud of its picturesque quaintness and its nineteenth-century charm.

Our unique cottages and country gardens are little different today than they were a century ago. The local business houses, too, are famed for their old-world charm, personal service and kind hospitality. Let our village take you back in time to an era of tranquility and peace

And with its predilection for imposing gates, bells that gently tinkle in the breeze, snowy blossoms [swept fastidiously into piles] and curt, shorn verges, that ‘charm’ and ‘quaintness’ is all too apparent.

Fat, blowsy camellias spill their load in a greasy swill of colour at every corner. Well-bred tradies have tastefully branded vehicles parked outside white picket fences, and the $8 toast is missing its butter, which the Tin Lid puts down to “old-world charm” in a pique of sarcasm that fills me with pride.

Maplewood, Hathaway, The Folly, Kricklewood – we’re a long way from Dunroamin’ here Toto. In fact, with its robust endorsement of all things ornate and quaint, Burrawang – with its alarming appreciation of symmetry – is almost too tidy. Even the For Lease signs are cultivated with the discerning reader in mind.

This lofty self-appreciation is appreciated by squabbles of daytrippers. It is soaked up from the front seat of the luxury SUV or sampled from a tasting platter at the General Store. Smartphones click and snap, capturing the sights for posterity, a sports car here,
a suitably aged produce box there…

Tea is served with a hand-knitted blanket at the general store, while a nice sav blanc is accompanied by artisanal bread and an iPad-clutching waiter, intent on fulfilling every future desire you might have, from truffle-infused string fries to smashed [insert superfood here]. Its retro appeal belies a very contemporary take on country living, and while the menu is gastronomic, I miss the four’n’twenty aroma and fly-stripped flaps of the corner store, complete with grimace-faced attendant and back copies of Earthmoving Equipment moulding alongside wrinkled Granny Smiths.

But the bunting matches the local school’s colours, so that’s a win…

A congregation of magpies warbles from the war memorial, their head-bowing respect tinged with swooping intent, beady eyes watching every flicker of movement. They appear to be looking closely at what is on offer at Burrawang School of Arts; home to the annual Burrawang Ball and “regular morning teas,” the hall offers Sketching in the Gardens workshops and group meditation, though I get the distinct impression neither impresses the birds.

The town’s utilities require no meditative practice at all. Lined up in military formation, they are innately themselves, considered, calm and centred, albeit itching for someone to notice…

Retirement is many things: beyond withdrawing from active working life, it is the closing of one chapter, while another begins, it’s drophead Saabs and lunch at the golf club, or large-print thrillers and cheese sarnies in front of the midday movie depending on whether you have achieved financial freedom or must now rely on increased dependence upon the state.

With its foodie hotspots, botanical concept boutiques, Italian homewares, an emphasis on sustainable and seasonal eating, keep cups, regional galleries, sculpture gardens, its own symphony orchestra, lash salons and a destination store for mid-century fanatics, the Southern Highlands is the epitome of life after work. It is a mid-life merry-go-round featuring fine wine and cultured conversation, manicured lawns and stylish wellies with which to exercise the Cavoodle.

Burrawang is a sanctuary, seclusion from vagaries of old age and the indignity of poverty, loneliness, fear, despair and a loss of hope, though I am not naive enough to think this sadness does not exist here. Rather it is well hidden, shrouded in well-cut linen and cinnamon scented.

But there is something missing. And I can’t quite put my finger on it.

I want to think of the new chapter in an ageing life as the zenith, the summit of the journey to reach ‘old growth’. For many, this too-tidy town is that, the crest. But it is also an ‘experiential destination’, a hot spot for those with time on their hands, and it runs the risk of becoming contrived in its perfection, a tasting plate for retirement with too many expensive sides on offer.

There is old growth here – gentle giants creak on the wind, their shade life-sustaining, their roots the substrate to the township. But they are kept at arm’s length, shunned from participating in the country weddings, garden symphonies and stylised eating plans.

Perhaps if they were allowed to creep a little closer, if the land surrounding them was a little less manicured, controlled… Perhaps if there was a frisson of gentle disobedience reintroduced, in homage to the highland heroes of whom tales are told around every fire, of cattle rustling and bareback chases, shearing battles and barrels of rum? Perhaps then I could settle into old age in a place like Burrawang.

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Red dirt country

Posted on September 22, 2014 by Babelfishing

This land, this raw-edged end-of-the-world where frills of habitation unfurl, has history. It broils with stories and lore, it is speckled with the patina of the past, and its callous beauty slams the senses.

This is the red-dirt country of The Kimberley, splayed across WA’s northern reaches with ferocious pride. Beyond Broome, on the northern extremity of the Dampier Peninsula, Cape Leveque succumbs to the ocean in a fit of bleeding intensity, blood red rocks leeching into bone white sand strewn with ragged rocks, a pirate’s curse in paradise…

Up here The Kimberley Land Council (KLC) represents the traditional owners of the land, with the aim of assisting Indigenous mob in ‘getting country back, caring for country, and securing the future’. The council is charged with the responsibility to do everything in its power to protect traditional land and waters as well as to protect, enhance and gain legal, social and political status for the customs, laws and traditions of the traditional owners. And its doing its job well – parts of the Kimberley have recently been awarded Indigenous protection and have been heritage listed.

From where I am standing, bathed in the last rays of a setting sun, this country has a greater glory, swathed as it is in the care of its people. An ancient magic settles around me, and, for a landscape so starkly lunar, the Cape has an embrace that is wholly peaceful, almost loving.

With time at a standstill we could be in any era – past or future – the slough of foaming waves and the ticking of the rocks as they cool our only constants. Fat slabs of black volcanic rock break the sea into splashing frivolity, salty debris litters the sand and as the sun blinks out in a fiery exchange with a bruised horizon we are bathed in pink, a surreal glow that is almost nauseating…

The notorious Cape Leveque road, a gun-barrel of dirt that borders on mental instability is the reason the peace is so intense. A mere 90kms of back-jolting chassis-smashing pain divides the Cape from the rest of the world. And while we are not afraid of a little dirt, many are. Hence the quiet.

This maniacal streak of red trammels into the distance, insistent, demanding and as vitriolic as a vicious teen. It is littered with wrecks and exploded tyre treads, the rubber curled menacingly in the powdery bulldust as dire reminder, and on the odd occasion you meet a fellow traveller the casual outback wave carries the tremulous quiver of a hope not yet lost.

Tumbledown joints sit waiting at the end of yet more dirt, protected from visitors by Locals Only signs, corrugations the size of small cars and deep sinks that swallow vehicles whole.

But deep in this primordial spirit world, ringed by bushfires, Middle Lagoon is safe water, a local fishing spot veiled in spicy eucalypt smoke,

It is prehistoric, an ancient place that begs investigation. After a quick bear hunt – an obligation on empty beaches that howl for the cries of delight of a four year old at play – the Tin Lid and I go in search of shells and fill our pockets and hats and shoes with treasure washed in from the deep.