The lesson of the Cronulla riots was that the beach was not for people like me. But it’s a myth I am increasingly resisting

‘I still have never been to Cronulla beach. Even today it evokes a spectre of fear.’ Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian

I was a young journalism student when I watched news footage of hundreds of young white men storming Sydney’s Cronulla beach. Boys armed with flags and weapons, incited by exhortations from the likes of talkback broadcaster Alan Jones and by text messages asking “every Aussie in the Shire get down to North Cronulla to support the Leb and wog bashing day”.

Geographically, the Arab lads of Bankstown and Shire boys of Cronulla were neighbours, but culturally the consequences of infringing West Side Story-beach lines were clear. The 2005 beach riots made international headlines. Southern Cross-tattooed patriots marked their territory, scrawling “100% Aussie pride” in the sand and popularising the slogan: “You flew here, we grew here.”