Amy Cooper

Wednesday May 9, 2007 04:08 PM

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Let's banish the fun dodgers

I live close to Kings Cross. Not, oddly enough, because I want to be lulled to sleep by silence, listen to birdsong, take long walks across rolling meadows and escape the madding crowd.

I base myself close to Sydney's liveliest entertainment area so I can enjoy the buzz and bustle of urban living at its most vibrant. I consider it a privilege to be where the city's heartbeat pounds loud and clear in time with the tunes pumping out of the clubs. And right now, while the spectre of economic misery looms over us all, it cheers me to see crowds chatting, dancing and forgetting their problems.
I don't expect peace and quiet and pretty here. If I wanted that, I'd shift myself to one of this city's sedate suburbs or even the bush.
I know that some nights, the volume will be high and the partying won't stop. That's the nature of the place and if I'm not out there amongst it I wish the revelers luck, pop in the earplugs and let the beats rock me to sleep. If I complained, I'd expect my mates- most of whom live around here too - to remind me that this is not a tranquil country retreat but a densely populated area which makes its living from decadence.
So I was dismayed to learn this week that some of my fellow locals have convinced Sydney Council to reject the development application from Keystone Hospitality's fantastic new venue, Sugarmill, to build a rooftop terrace bar.
One of the fun avoiders who opposed the application told the council: "this rooftop bar will have a major impact on noise pollution and will be detrimental to my health, not to mention my privacy." This woman lives 'in direct eyeline' to the bar, which puts her close to at least three others, at least one of which has been opening way past midnight for decades. The Cross has been party central for much longer anyway - without doubt, longer than this moaning minnie has lived here. Expecting privacy and peace in a place like this is like ordering a dry martini in a Buddhist monastery. Stupid.
I know the operators of many of the bars in the Cross and, like the rest of the hospitality industry, they're doing it tough. Some are already labouring under nonsensical NSW lockout laws which appear to be designed only to incite violence on the streets and put bars out of business. And yet these businesses receive little thanks for the positive changes they've encouraged. The new generation of Kings Cross bars, which includes Sugarmill, Elk, Piano Room, Goldfish and the renovated Kings Cross Hotel are slick, upmarket venues aimed at polishing up the area's previously grotty face and attracting a high-spending demographic. They're good news for the local economy in hard times and they deserve more support from those of us who benefit from their presence. If these operators' every attempt to offer a bigger, better entertainment experience are blocked at every step they'll eventually give up and move out, leaving us only with what we had before: the dodgy, the downbeat and the dangerous.
In my experience, serial complainers about development applications and neighbourhood noise are rarely useful members of the community. They're the sort of people who'll knock on your door to berate you about your crying baby or barking dog but are the last to know - or care- if you've been lying dead and undiscovered in your kitchen for three months. They should cheer up, shut up, or bugger off.
I reckon we need new laws to regulate these fun dodgers. They should be required to smile for 10 minute intervals on the hour each day, watch one comedy show a week, produce evidence of one act of constructive community spirit on a regular basis and learn how to mix a perfect Manhattan.
Or just move to Melbourne.

by Amy Cooper at 07:22 PM
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Sunday, February 8, 2009

Cruel country, brave people

Not long after I first came to Australia from the UK, I interviewed the headmistress of a small rural school who had gone to work despite receiving a snakebite wound that morning. They were understaffed, she explained, and she was needed there.

She carried on working as the toxin took hold and only stopped when her eyesight failed, her limbs began to give way and she realised she should probably get herself seen to. She survived. "I knew I'd be right," she said at the time. "But I probably should have seen the doctor a bit earlier."
She was my first encounter with Australian implacability in the face of the constant assaults inflicted by this country's volatile, savage landscape.
I quickly learned this is a place where a Great White shark in a feeding frenzy with a posse of hammerhead buddies just off a public beach makes a snippet in the Manly Daily, not a horror movie script. Where people routinely lose chunks of their bodies to bites and stings. And where many live in areas where their lives, loved ones and possessions are at the constant mercy of the elements.
But whenever I interviewed someone who had come off worst in a tussle with nature - no matter how bloody - they displayed the same dogged refusal to capitulate as the redoubtable country headmistress. Not only that, but also a genuine concern for whoever might be doing it tougher. There was no choice - you got on with life and you helped others get on with it.
I hadn't seen anything like it back home but I'd heard from my grandparents about Britain's famous war spirit during the Blitz. And it seemed to me that in certain parts of Australia, daily life unfolded in something rather like a war zone, where monstrous flames could suddenly rise up and devour you or raging torrents submerge you; a terrain peppered with animal snipers ready to pounce concealed in ground as lousy with dangers as a minefield.
It takes guts of cast iron to live in the Australian bush. Many of my compatriots can't even stomach the cities here, fleeing in the face of insects, hailstorms and heatwaves just moments from the CBD (I've even seen Poms driven home by the loud squawking of parrots). It isn't their fault - they're just not accustomed to deadly jellyfish underfoot or lethal spiders in the garden. And they don't have the leather-tough genes formed by decades of cohabitation with such neighbours.
To us, bush fires are the most terrifying of all Australia's strange and ferocious natural phenomena. They're the stuff of nightmares and we have nothing with which to compare their scale and intensity. British weather can be turbulent, but even its worst moods cannot come close to matching the fury unleashed in Victoria over the last few days.
I know I can only look on and wonder again at Australians' reserves of courage, compassion and humour in the face of sheer hell. And feel the sorrow shared by all that those reserves must be tested so brutally this time.

by Amy Cooper at 04:32 PM
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Let's banish the fun dodgers

Cruel country, brave people

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