What I Think About When I Think About Getting On The B-Line
I’m embarrassed by where I grew up, in part due to the fact it’s a rich area, but also because the reputation of its residents is well known. Of course they don’t want a train line here – how else would they keep the foreigners and immigrants out?
It wasn’t until I left high school that I understood being asked whether or not I owned a boat was not a normal question. Up to that point, I just assumed I was some outlier for not having one in the same way that I assumed I was an outlier for living in a tiny apartment or having a mother with a thick Thai accent who couldn’t pronounce her V’s. I tried not to be embarrassed by these things, but I was. Push it down, push it down.
I’ve always had this sense of inadequacy following me around like a black dog ever since I was small. In primary school, kids would ask me where I was from and they would be disappointed when I replied “... Australia?” Similarly, they always seemed unsatisfied when I told them that I was not, in fact, related to my Indian friends. Of course I had to be lying! Why, we were the only brown kids in our year, so we must all be cousins! Silly me.
“I would’ve never guessed that you were from the Northern Beaches.”
Someone said this to me a few months ago during an interview I was doing for Honi Soit, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. I think about the way I behaved before I revealed this fact – self-deprecating, probably rambling about the work I do for Vertigo and my desire to see more people of colour submit their work. I remember what I was wearing that day, too: my oversized X-Ray Spex shirt and baggy Uniqlo parachute pants.
It takes a trained eye, but once you’ve had a bit of practice, you can spot a Northern Beaches youth from a mile away. Typically blonde, but brunettes exist in Manly too. For girls, it’s Lululemon leggings or White Fox sweats. There’s no in-between. Their skin tight tops are usually covered up by black puffer jackets in the winter, and they trade their white trainers (Nike or Reebok, usually) for Uggs. For boys, the mullet is usually a dead giveaway, but even then, you don’t really need to check out what they’re wearing. Their obnoxious attitude tells you all you need to know.
Setting the obvious race reasons aside, I always feel like I stick out like a sore thumb. Dressed in loud, colourful knitwear, thrifted jackets and dungarees, I’m no better than your stereotypical Inner Westie, really. But the Northern Beaches is where funky self-expression goes to die.
I remember, one time, a friend ran into me while I was waiting for the bus at Warringah Mall.
“Of course I recognised you,” she said. “Who else here wears a leather jacket and a massive sweater with a duck on the front?”
When I think about people being unable to guess that I’m from the Beaches, I can’t help but wear it as a badge of honour. I’m embarrassed by where I grew up, in part due to the fact it’s a rich area, but also because the reputation of its residents is well known. Of course they don’t want a train line here – how else would they keep the foreigners and immigrants out?
At uni, I’m often asked, “Whereabouts in Sydney are you from?” It’s a standard question, a good point of reference and icebreaking. Most people don’t know where Brookvale is, and if they do, it’s probably because they’ve had a Brookvale Union brew or they actually follow Rugby League. I always explain its geography by saying it’s a ten to fifteen minute bus ride to Manly. Realising how obnoxious that makes me sound, I always instinctively follow it up by cracking, “it’s one of the two ethnically diverse suburbs on the Northern Beaches” (which I do genuinely believe, by the way – that and Dee Why, for all the gentrification it’s gotten over the years). Then, if I’m feeling really embarrassed, I follow that up with, “I can tell you exactly where the melanin stops. Once you’re past Collaroy and Narrabeen, it’s just white people. That’s the border.” And again, it’s true – I did work experience at Avalon Public School while I was in high school and there were maybe one or two POC kids I saw during my whole time there.
When people find out I’m from the Northern Beaches, their responses are usually as follows:
Well, you’re rich, then!
Take me to your mansion one day.
That must be so nice, being able to surf and swim whenever you want.
Oh… you don’t get trains up there, right?
Is that the North Shore?
And the thing is, mixed in with this feeling of embarrassment, I get this white-hot surge of resentment. I know I grew up in a nice area. But I live with my single mum who speaks two languages and works eight hours a day at Dee Why RSL. I’ve seen the burns on her arms and the callouses on her hands. If there’s more than three people inside my apartment I get claustrophobic. I didn’t go to a private school, I never went skiing during the school holidays, and I sure as hell don’t own a yacht. Not to mention the most glaring one: my mum and I have copped so much racism and microaggressions from the rich white people around us all our lives here. I’m not working class, but I’ve never felt like I belonged on the Northern Beaches, and for a time, Australia in general. Always an alien, always an outsider. Always inadequate.
But I can’t complain. If I do, I’ll look like a privileged twat, or worse, a privileged twat desperately trying to make themselves appear relatable to the lower classes. And I can’t get angry either. I have to play it off, make a joke, patiently let peoples’ assumptions about me go.
I don’t want to joke, though. I want to shake the people who think I’m an out of touch rich kid by their shoulders and tell them about how I felt so inadequate as a kid going to my friend’s two-storey houses with beautiful views. How a man followed my mum in his car through Dee Why all just so that he could shout at her to go back to where she came from. How in Year 12, a teacher came into my Ancient History class and sang happy birthday to me in front of everyone without realising he’d mixed me up with my Sri Lankan friend. How, when I was in primary school, I would sometimes wish I was white, or wish that my dad had married a white woman so I didn’t have to feel so wrong. Then I’d get all guilty and wonder how I could think such cruel thoughts.
Last year, I wrote a sketch for a comedy show I was in called “Northern Beaches Civil War”. It was supposed to be a parody of the American Civil War where the Northern Beaches, in all its self-importance, tries to secede from the rest of Australia and become its own state. Filled with jabs at the people and places I’d grown up with, it wasn’t until after I’d written and performed it onstage that I realised how angry the writing was. It was a comedic skit, sure, but underneath my jokes I was being completely serious. The fact that white people would try and correct parts of my sketch afterwards made me angrier. But conversely, every night I performed it, I’d get laughs from POC, mostly from my high school friends who also shared similar experiences. It was cathartic being able to express how we’d all felt, but it was also the first time I’d ever actually stopped to think about how the Northern Beaches affected me during my adolescence.
Northern Beaches kids grow up in an unintentional bubble. Anything beyond Mosman is a mystery to them, and until I went to uni, I confess I was the same. In high school, I legitimately couldn’t tell you the difference between the eastern and western suburbs. My childhood and teenage years was Brookvale, Dee Why, Manly, Narrabeen, Warriewood, Mona Vale. I know those places like the back of my hand, especially Dee Why and Manly. I want to turn my back on all of it, but I can’t: the pool in Freshwater where I learned how to swim. The newsagency in Curl Curl where my mum would buy me Paddle Pops after school. Boardwalk upon boardwalk upon boardwalk where I would stroll with my grandparents. The park in Balgowlah where I had my first kiss. Sitting on Dee Why beach as my friends and I had post-high school existential crises. As much as I try my best to ignore it, there is a sense of familiarity and comfort that pervades my resentment whenever I hop on the B-line to go home.
How do I reconcile these feelings of nostalgia and familiarity, rooted in adolescent memories, with the complete and utter hatred I have for this place? I think about the way people have treated me on the Northern Beaches for the last 20 years of my life, and it makes me so unbelievably angry. I think about the things people say to me when they find out I’m from the Northern Beaches, and my resentment grows. I’m trapped in this encasement of frustration. It’s been simmering since I was a kid, and I want to break out of it, but I can’t. Oh no! My privileged upbringing wasn’t as privileged as it seems!
When someone asks me where I’m from in Sydney, how can I explain this concept to them in five minutes? The nuances, the exceptions and the rules, the emotions and the memories, all while making sure they have the right idea? Even now, writing this piece, I feel like I’m barely scratching the surface of what’s been bubbling underneath me. I can’t say everything I need to say, and if I’m honest, I don’t really know how to say it.
So I just settle for the same thing every time: “Yeah, it’s nice! Just a ten minute bus ride from Manly and lots of great beaches, haha. Shame about the trains, though.”