This was published in issue 313 of Surfing World magazine. I thought I'd put it up here for prosperity.

For many years, in big white lines the words “Locals Only” were inscribed on the asphalt in the car park of my local beach. The beach in question is Long Reef on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. I have no doubt that those same words appeared at many other beaches around Australia and the rest of the world. Those words have faded now. Some locals have come and gone. There are days when I feel the local camaraderie, but often I look around and wonder, who the @#$% all these people are and where they all come from. I get dropped in on, mostly by Brazilians and find myself dodging middle-aged men that should really know better.

The years have not been kind to this area. Everyone wants to live here. Prices have skyrocketed. So now, I cant even afford to rent a place on my own. I grew up here. I walk to the beach when it’s good. I do it all, the awful factory job and the underrated life, simply because surfing is the most important thing in the world to me. Surfing is why I bother to keep living in overpopulatedville.

I drove from Collaroy to Warriewood on a Saturday at around 10 am. A round trip of 9 kilometres took me nearly an hour. I got back home and got pretty down about the whole situation. A part of me doesn’t want to be here any more. A part of me wants it the way it used to be. This place used to be mostly working class. I remember sitting at the bus stop on Pittwater Road and we would play car cricket. A six was a Mercedes; you got out when a cab came. Now a six is the oldest car you can see. You don’t get may sixes any more.

The whole joint has been gentrified and now they want to build a big monstrosity of a surf club with a restaurant attached and the local council couldn’t even give a toss about me, the true local. These yuppies move in and need a place to have a coffee, while their little ones do nippers. Come to my house and I’ll make you a great coffee. Just leave my beach alone. Leave it the way it is. A beach, not a place of business.

I’m all for upgrades and amenities being up to standard, but I get angry when you want to make my place of worship into a shrine for all that is great about capitalism and gentrification. I love my town, but I’m being pushed out. Being forced out. I worry about the future of this area and I worry about the future of our oceans. Respect for the local is diminishing. I have respected this place my whole life and it saddens me to feel like I don’t belong anymore. 

I saddens me to realise that I am the minority. 

I ask all surfers of this great land to make sure we keep the beaches real. To keep the oceans alive with the sort of folk that care. I urge all of you to be kind in and out of the water. I urge all of you to fight for what is right and realise we are all visitors of the great oceans. None of us are locals.

Respect,
Mack Mountain