A Utopian society - Western Suburbs style

[Brynhild]

This young girl grew up in a rough suburb west of Sydney that goes by the name of Blacktown, so named after the Aboriginals who were found there. What Wikipedia won't tell you is how the original name should've been Coontown. Governor Tench, in his infinite wisdom, decided that the word Black was somewhat less derogatory. Two hundred years later, the name isn't changed. Thank the Gods that political correctness didn't get in the way of that!

One of her earliest memories were the amount of suicides she had come to hear about. She even accidentally stumbled on a saturday morning funeral, while attending confession. That was also a suicide, and a very sombre service indeed.

This girl grew up in a neighbourhood of mostly boys. She also had an older brother. She learned - the hard way - to fight like the boys and use her fists to get her out of the bullies' way. Violence was a way of life, especially among the lower working class who were lucky to be able to wear the shirts on their backs. The one time she set foot in the local pub, she was set upon by a couple of local girls who had beaten her to concussion. She made a stupid mistake of accusing the wrong person of stealing money from her. She was also 16 at the time, and learned to keep her mouth shut thereafter. She was fortunate enough to be found by a group of passers-by who took her home. The hospital should've been the first port of call for her, but miraculously, the only obvious signs of injury were two black eyes.

Other local clubs and pubs were haunts for those who wanted to get pissed, get laid and take drugs. She got into all of that, but managed to draw the line at the harder drugs like Heroin, Cocaine, Speed etc. She knew heaps of people who did, though. There were no shortages of O.Ds as a result. She also walked among the rougher element, who, on the whole, didn't drag her into their more sordid affairs - including murder and manslaughter.

One such incident happened at a local nightclub. For some reason, she wasn't there this night. She was surprised to hear that somebody had been stabbed at the club by a bloke she knew as a mate. Another bloke she knew took a paid contract to conduct a hit on a drug dealer. The bloke doing the hit shot the dealer's daughter instead - an innocent child in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fights among local Bikie gangs were also commonplace. Unless you were amongst that lot, you stayed the fuck away, because your very life could well have depended on it.

On the opposite side of the violence coin, she also knew people who had been murdered. One bloke was the local postman. It was believed to either have been a domestic dispute or drugs. The worst act of violence that occurred in this community was the gang-rape and murder of Anita Cobby. Anita Cobby, nee Lynch, was 5 years above this girl at the local high school, she also had a sister in the same year as herself. Her family lived close by. The poor woman made the fatal mistake of declining her father's lift from the station to home. She also made the fatal mistake of walking on the left side of the road, without knowing who was coming from behind - which is how those 5 vicious scum found her. After her body was found behind the local drive-in there was grief, anger and outrage such as the community never saw - a community that is otherwise immune to violence. A noose was even hung up from outside the courthouse for a time.

Until this girl, now a woman, moved away from Blacktown, she put up with men flashing their dicks at her out of the blue (could be seen as funny, but your instincts don't know for that split second what will happen to you and adrenaline kicks in), homies threatening her late at night on a railway station, watching a Maori rob and beat up another bloke while she was going to work. Kings Cross would be safer by comparison!

Finally, the chance came for this woman and her family to move away to a much quieter and more idyllic town out of Sydney. Even so, there is vandalism of some form, fights happen. The local postmaster was threatened with a syringe. He did a bold thing by disarming him. She took her two younger kids out shopping one day. They witnessed a group of girls (if they can be called that, they were rough as guts!) beating up on some bloke. Her kids have been very lucky in that they've seen relatively little. The oldest, however, has learned to be more streetwise, after one of his friends who he was with got beaten up by a group of Abos, because she didn't have any smokes to give them. It was only through the intervention of other passers-by that they avoided worse happening to them. He likes going to metal concerts where the mosh pits these days are rather wild.

There's no such thing as Utopia. Everyone would experience life in their own way. She does, however, count herself fortunate in being able to live among a more peaceful environment - a better environment than she knew. For the sake of her family, moving away was an easy choice.