from the station it's a long way home

An oft heard criticism of the Sutherland Shire is that people who live there don't want to go elsewhere. "The insular penninsular." And yet the bridges out are clogged every morning, and packed coming back in every evening, the railway bridge, Tom Ugly's and Captain Cook. People move in and out of the shire in droves.

It's only after I left, maybe in the last 10 or 15 years that the Shire has become known as a whole in that way. I remember in my first year of university saying that I came from Caringbah, and a boy from Mosman said "Oh, the slums of the south." He didn't say, "Oh, the Shire." Now you'd get the same sneer, but perhaps instead of ignorance, a touch of jealousy. I'm not sure, it's hard for me to say, I don't live there anymore.

The irony of "The insular penninsular" is that Sutherland Shire is made up of land jutting out into bays, people living on Turriel Bay despise people living on Yowie Bay, people on Burraneer Bay are unconsciousable, and people on Gunnamatta Bay are beyond the pale. People that live at Bundeena and Maianbar are in another world entirely, each in his own.

The most ridiculous people smuggling story I've ever read was an article in the Herald in the 90's, about a gang who'd been arrested. The plan was to take people from boats sitting off shore, via fishing boats which would land at Dolans Bay wharf in the very early morning, load the people in mini-buses and drive them away. I've written "ridiculous" but I wonder how many people were unloaded and shipped out into Sydney before the plan was exposed.

Now there's a restaurant in Cronulla called "The Nuns' Pool", and the pool of the nuns was down by that wharf, not that we ever saw anyone swimming.