Cronulla riots 20 years on: have attitudes changed since that hot December day when racial tensions exploded?

‘I didn’t think I would ever witness something like that. I thought, “Oh, that’s the stuff of overseas. It’s not Australia”’ … a crowd gathers at Cronulla on 11 December 2005. Photograph: Paul Miller/AAP

Julie Cutbush noticed the chanting first. At home in Cronulla, in Sydney’s south, on 11 December 2005, the then high school teacher could hear shouting in the nearby beachside park.

“So I took a walk,” she says. “I turned the corner at the surf life saving club and I saw this mass of young males.”