this isn’t for those who fly in wearing pristine akubra hats and shame like a costume. the ones who eat off the fat of fear and call it community engagement. who talk and spit over their crumbed snapper about values they’ve never lived and bare-knuckled battles they’ve never had to fight. they’ll be gone before the wind shifts to a dangerous northerly, before the last prawn is peeled and exposed. their microphones and poorly ventilated vengeance, mistaken for victories, will stay hot long after their words go cold.
this is not for them.
this is for the ones who stay when kepa kurl is butt ugly. when bins are bloated with dead things and fester too long after a public holiday. when chip packets and broken camping gear somersault into the dunes because the people who dumped them treat the whole town as single-use, before they leave to return to their second lives, somewhere with more bins. when the wind punches through you and the truth bites harder than the sharks in the headlines.
for the ones who know what it’s like to chase down stolen solar lights and your bicycle because the power bill doubled and you can't afford fuel, and maybe, just maybe, that little glow might buy you a sense of safety. those lights aren't a garden garnish. they’re necessity. they’re a quiet, stubborn refusal to surrender to the dark or the hostile gaze of security cameras.
for renters breathing through mould, asbestos, and grime because everything was "fixed" with just another coat of paint, handing over half their paychecks to landlords who treat them like squatters, wedged between farmer-owned ghost houses and easy airbnb escapes they’ll never afford to rent, let alone live near.
for the young workers pulling beers, restocking bait freezers, watching their dream of staying disappear faster than their penalty rates and their patience for the regular alcoholics. for all those treated like temporary problems, not permanent people.
for the migrants afraid every time their employer’s mood swings, because their entire right to stay hangs off a temper. this town doesn’t feel like home. it feels like a transaction. a desperate plea for a future that isn’t on offer.
for the lost twenty- and thirty-somethings who love the ocean but can’t swim in it. not because of sharks, but because their mental health is disappearing faster than the dunes. no one’s looking out for them, so they freeze up at home. for the barefoot dreamers who moved here chasing peace, only to find the same cliques and dead-eyed hierarchies that rotted their high school quadrangles years ago.
for the ones flipping cars on country roads, exhausted from three jobs and still trying to be everything to everyone. for those sleeping under the cold concrete sound shell with their four-legged friends, out of the weather, still feeling guilty for not being more grateful, because somewhere along the way, someone taught them that paradise had a price tag and silence was part of the payment.
for the FIFO workers swinging between mine sites and motel rooms, blamed for the housing crisis but still priced out of leases. drinking alone because survival was taught louder than belonging. earning money by adding to the climate crisis, spending more just trying to stay human.
for the kids sweating under trending hoodies in summer, hiding the parts of themselves most likely to get punished. for the mums dressing them with trembling hands, praying today isn’t the day the town decides their kid is too poor, too weird, too much to fit.
for Aboriginal kids walking home in groups or stacked three deep on electric scooters, not because they’re a threat but because it’s safer that way. followed in shops, questioned at skate parks, stared down while eating a burger and fries. learning early which exits are safest, how to shrink without disappearing completely.
still showing up. still laughing at full volume in front of tight-lipped helicopter parents. still balling up their socks and shooting hoops under flickering floodlights because here feels safer than home after dark.
for women and girls who can't walk the foreshore without getting whistled at by men twice their age, men in boardshorts and work boots slouched on benches like public land is their birthright. for the ones still walking fast with keys between their fingers, still getting cornered by charm weaponised into threat, even in food aisles, even in daylight.
for the kids whose nervous systems are wrecked by social feeds that sell them fear in one hand and fake belonging in the other. fight, flight, freeze, scroll.
for the volunteers replanting what 4WDs tore apart, fighting to save what the dunes are still trying to give us back. fighting against soil already sick with dieback and dollar signs. begging for grants while white-walled offices sprout up like corporate mushrooms, air-conditioned, sterile, smug. stacked like tissue boxes. full of nothing.
for those working directly with community, not from behind a desk painted in three shades of bureaucratic shire blue, but in kitchens. in parks. in tears. paid in burnout and hollow thanks.
for the creatives and freelancers scaffolding this town’s soul, driving between gigs on petrol fumes, showered in the sweat from the job before. pitching bold ideas into empty rooms that smile and nod and then bury them. making this place vibrant and liveable without thanks, just more forms to fill out and the added stress of fitting in self-care and therapy.
this is not for those with money who could build something useful but instead build another empty monument to themselves. a mass-produced merchandise venture that no one asked for. they call it legacy. they call it necessity. we call it landfill.
they’ve never waited in the op shop line hoping for five-dollar shoes that fit. never seen a volunteer turn a blind eye when someone tucks a jumper beneath a week’s worth of groceries paid for in tokens. never understood that survival doesn’t wait for permission.
for the cab drivers, the midnight confessors and the unofficial cartographers of this town’s grief map. for the wildlife carers holding broken animals like confessionals. for the rangers who know a home is dangerous by how the dog flinches before you even knock.
for those who asked for help and were told, “sorry, i’m not qualified.” who cried under harsh fluoro lights and never got the callback. for the counsellors trying to patch a whole postcode's grief with cheap bandaids and broken hours. for the carers who haven’t slept properly since a loaf of bread cost under four dollars.
for disabled people and LGBTQIA+ folk treated like charity cases instead of neighbours. for the ones still being misgendered every day by the same barista and smiling through it.
for the small sacred things flattened by hoons with fragile egos and yuppy tyres. for the slow ones. the soft ones. the ones just trying to cross the road without gambling with their life.
for those writing letters like this because yelling gets you branded angry, and politeness gets you nothing. for those who were told far too young, they were too much and not enough by a careless curriculum, rabid media, and community groups full of ghost-riddled echo chambers.
because we’ve seen the rot. and the radiance. because the same people keep hogging the mic, turning the coastline into a commodity stamped 'heritage-friendly' — a surf swell governed by self-elected dictators who intimidate others by wearing zinc thick like war paint.
we’ve read the shire’s announcements. scanned the glossy PDFs. ticked their consultation surveys. watched their "inclusive future" campaigns while every beach entrance along the 'tourist loop' still has a step. no ramps. no access. still.
how many more bronze plaques must we erect for people swallowed by the sea or by silence?
we’re running out of benches. we're running out of excuses.
so what if we pulled the plug? not just metaphorically. literally.
turn off the mic. turn up the voices that have been speaking into the wind for decades.
listen to the ones who know how to pick up the pieces, tend to the fractures, replant the ferals, and nurse the forgotten things.
the ones still picking up rubbish, microplastics, poor decisions, still saying “thank you” because gratitude costs less than giving up.
because the problem was never lack of will. it’s a lack of resources. and a system so broken it waters asphalt with busted sprinklers and calls it landscaping.
this town is not a bubble. it’s not protected. it’s just gotten very, very good at hiding the bruises under drone footage and drone-thinking.
but bruises don’t heal when you paint over them. especially not with another mural that reeks of colonialism and unpaid artist invoices.
we see it all. we feel it all. and we’re done pretending we don’t.
this isn’t about anger. it’s about truth.
naming what we see, clearly and carefully, with the sharp, tired, living edge of those who stayed.
we're not asking for a seat at your table anymore. we're building our own. crooked, handmade, heavy with realness, beneath a sky punched full of holes and a milky way still daring to shine through a thousand satellites in its wake.
this town is not theirs to define.
we are many. we are awake. we are not sorry.