A Guided Tour of Sydney's North Shore: Where dark-skinned locals don't know that Golliwog dolls are offensive

There’s something enchanting about the North Shore, a place more English than England, something so white and pure it would sell for records at an auction for ivory (though something as dull as the North Shore should be more illegal than ivory). I have good word (from someone who does PR for the whaling industry) that Central Queensland is more ethnically diverse than Sydney’s North Shore. Though someone ought to have told Pauline Hanson that London is what you get when you mix Lakemba with Lane Cove (and Wahroonga might’ve been a better place to purchase than Westminster).

Mind you, if I had somehow ever found the money and Blue blood a way to live and go to school on the North Shore (getting into North Sydney Boys High School doesn’t count, although maybe being a Haemophiliac does...), and if I thus turned into a true SHEmale, I probably wouldn’t be writing as something as vulgar as this blog (NB: if you think that turning into a SHEmale involves a sex change, then you are disowned as a friend of this blog. But from what I hear about rowing teams and Apple [in the] Chapel, you might actually be closer to the truth). However, a recent guided tour of the North Shore made me slightly ever more thankful that my dear parents blew what savings they had in the nineties on overseas holidays rather than classier real estate. Whereas money makes the Eastern Suburbs posh, obnoxious and extravagant (a place where women at Bondi Junction scream at Citryrail staff for not holding the train for them “because I’m not Asian!”), money somehow makes the North Shore really pretty but just a little dull.

 On the North Shore, there is nice park

On the North Shore, houses have names

 On the North Shore, there are hedges

 On the North Shore, this was the only car that wasn't German-made

On the North Shore, people live behind gates. 

On the North Shore, Blake Dawson Waldron got this car for his 16th birthday 

Don’t get me wrong, I quite enjoyed paying $29 for my fish and chips at the Coonanbarra cafe, where unlike other cafes, you actually have an excuse to use the salt and pepper on your table.

On the North Shore, people eat at this cafe

Come to think of it, I settled in so well that I too was convinced that I was a Chinese language assistant at Knox and Abbotsleigh (rather than just some guy who dressed up like one so they wouldn’t suspect I was from Epping or that I was at least from Chatswood). Indeed, whenever I saw anyone that was remotely of colour, I asked my local but ethnic tour guide if they were related. However, I never managed to stop feeling guilty for being served, rather than the one actually doing the serving (never did I forget that I had more in common with the Asian waiters rather than my fellow diners), but amazingly, at no point did any one hand me an apron or feather-duster. I so would have fit in at Knox.

Nevertheless, at the end of the day, not growing up on the North Shore meant that when I walked into this shop, I actually knew how offensive this display was of not just one, but an entire colony of Golliwog dolls (I’m assuming Enid Blyton intended it to be colony rather than herd, flock or gaggle, now that would just be mean). I guess they weren’t expecting Oprah or anyone of ‘that sort’ in this shop anytime soon.

On the North Shore, would you like flowers with that?

The problem, though, wasn’t that I didn’t support the rights of persons to buy childhood toys. I’m all for buying dolls (hell, I have one of Hannah Spearritt of  S Club 7 that I won as the major prize when I was thirteen, they wouldn’t let me swap it for the minor prize of their new album). However, my personal tour guide – a North Shore native who constantly bemoans the lack of appropriate make up for dark-skinned women in Australia - couldn’t understand why I found the Golliwog dolls so offensive.

Yes, readers – people with dark skin that grew up on the North Shore don’t know that Golliwog dolls are offensive to them.

It’s enough to make you want to start up an NGO.

By Golly, It's Been a While

Hi all,

Apologies for the hiatus. Will return to normal posting soon.

Some food for thought:

Do people find Golligwog dolls offensive? Or is it just an American/English thing?

Also, would you pay $17 for a jar of pasta sauce? $29 for fish and chips?

Bin Laden, Big Deal (Berlin Wall Edition)

Foreign correspondent with the Daily Telegraph, here I come!

Had to rewrite the last article 'cos I took the wrong side. Oops. 

BIN LADEN, BIG DEAL Berlin Wall Edition 

These days, less and less people remember the fall of the Berlin Wall than do. But at least we were there for the ultimate demise of Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden’s demise is indeed the Berlin Wall of our times. To suggest otherwise would be to dismiss the Berlin Wall as but another human-made structure, or Bin Laden as just any other old geezer.

Never mind that Bin Laden was found in a fortified residence in the aptly-named Abbottabad in Pakistan, rather than some cave in Afghanistan (because people like Osama could have only possibly lived in caves, right?). If even George W Bush junior can bring himself to congratulate Barack Obama for doing what he could never do for so long as he looked in the wrong country for nearly an entire decade, so can we. Yes, yes we can.

That is not to deny that the War on Terror was a foil to the struggle to track down Bin Laden, after all. But in focussing on the fact that looking in caves and bombing Iraq was all in vain, we fail to comprehend and even appreciate the sheer awesomeness of America’s efforts under Obama to take down Public Enemy Number One completely under the radar, incognito, and without their closest allies ever knowing until Obama’s fateful and awe-inspiring announcement. Let’s not take this achievement away from the CIA and US Military, because they sorely needed it.

Many small-l liberals bemoan the lost opportunities that were thrown out with Bin Laden’s body in the Arabian Sea to reassert some lofty, erudite but nebulous ideals of the rule of law and presumption of innocence until proven guilty. I know I do. But let’s not kid ourselves – the Bin Laden trials were never going to see the light of day, let alone the pages of law school textbooks. This was Barack Obama’s moment, the exact boost he needed in the polls, and, at the end of the day, perhaps rightfully deserved.

Let us never forget that Bin Laden himself wasn’t that much of a saint either, and a formal death sentence would have only added spice and sizzle to celebrations of him as some martyr. Bin Laden as a guerilla may have been one of many, and he certainly did not define the Muslim world, but what commemorations and celebrations there were of Bin Laden is indicative of the cult of celebrity that surrounded him in his quest to define the Muslim world and its relations with the West.

However, with all the media and hype that surrounded Bin Laden, it was easy to forget that he was no Paris Hilton, but rather one of Saudi’s richest sons, and owner of a massive construction empire. He may not have ‘served billions’ like another giant fast-food killer, but as the ATM and CEO of Al-Qaeda branded terrorism, Bin Laden was similarly wealthy, transnational and likewise funded and licensed his name to terrorist operations from the USA to Kenya, the Middle East and the Far East in Indonesia and the Philippines. The sheer spectacle of the twin towers and and his subsequent sojourn in Abbottabad wiped away the world’s memories of all the planes he’d already hijacked in the 1990s in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia, and all the embassy, train station, public market and warship bombings he not only inspired but directly funded and masterminded. Fewer still recall Bin Laden’s nearly-successful plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II in Manila in 1995. From the comfort of our Sydney homes and offices where we have only ever needed to be alert but not alarmed, it was all too easy to forget the real, omnipresent threat posed by Bin Laden’s transnational presence to the peace and security of the rest of the world, but particularly Africa, the Middle East, Central and Southeast Asia. 

Of course, life goes on even in death. But Bin Laden’s death doesn’t just mean that life goes on, but that the US and the ‘international community’ can finally move on with the reconstruction of Afghanistan and Western relations with the Muslim world, North-South/East-West relations in general and perhaps even the containment of North Korea. The possibilities are endless.  Bin Laden may not have been the only monkey on the world’s back, but he was one hell of a guerilla.

In Bin Laden’s death, let’s live a little.