NEW SOUTH WAILS

Kim Fletcher finds that Australia is no

longer the happy-go-lucky land of the free, but a priggish nanny state

MY three-year-old daughter and I were minding our own business by the volley- ball courts when the man in the broad- brimmed hat and surf shorts appeared from nowhere, eyes invisible behind dark glasses, a whistle hanging from his wrist.

‘G'day,' he said, in the friendly fashion of officials who have been on public rela- tions courses. 'Let me explain how the beach works here.'

What he was really doing, it became clear, was telling me off. I had committed a serious offence. He had seen Matilda and me paddling in the sea. Through smarting eyes, conscious that my family was regarding with some curiosity my pub- lic humiliation, I made out the legend on his polo shirt: Manly Council.

He pointed to a 30-yard strip of beach between two flags planted at one end of half a mile of sand. Here the otherwise empty Pacific might as well have been the Irish Sea at Blackpool on a hot August bank holiday. Swimmers fought each other for air. 'You should only go into the sea between those two points, where there is proper supervision.'

`Wouldn't it be all right just to paddle here?'

He winced and frowned: 'We don't like it. We don't like it at all.'

`Just up to the ankle?'

`To be honest,' he said reluctantly, 'there is not a lot we can do to stop you doing that. But no more than to here.' He point- ed to the bottom of his freckled calf — no Bondi muscle man he — and strode off, swinging his whistle.

Was this the happy-go-lucky, roustabout, anti-establishment land of the free that I had imagined for so long? Was it for this those long dead British explorers and engi- neers — the First Fleeters and the brave Victorians in the years that followed had mapped out and carved up this inhos- pitable continent? Was it men like this bossy council officer who had crossed the Blue Mountains, driven an iron road to Perth, built the dingo fence across 2,000 miles of desert? Had Australia gone soft?

We should have known something was up as soon as we arrived. Sydney airport was entirely no-smoking. The taxi to Manly, a pretty suburb on a fine northern beach, was decorated with rules and instructions. Pedestrians at deserted road junctions waited obediently for the green man. And where we had expected to see them hosing out pubs we found bottles of wine cautiously labelled with precise num- bers of alcoholic units.

What had happened to bloody-minded, bolshie Australia? Depressed by the econo- my, downcast by unemployment and demor- alised by the debate over Aborigine land claims (the big newspapers were full of let- ters from conscience-stricken citizens eager to apologise and make amends, the smaller ones packed with letters from angry citizens keen to kick the Abos all over again), New South Wales gave every impression of set- tling anxiously into nanny statedom.

Friends in the Hunter Valley acknowl- edged the problem. 'It's exactly what is holding this country back,' explained a wine-grower who had arrived in a more rough and ready Australia in the 1950s. Unimpressed by the health lobby, he lov- ingly caressed the thick fat on his Christ- mas Day roast duck and called for more bottles of his own mellow chardonnay from the air-conditioned cellar. Only Coca-Cola was banned on his estate.

Perhaps things would be different further north. Surely Queensland, now back in National Party hands, would have retained the no-nonsense attitudes it had developed under Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the premier who ruled with such an iron fist for 32 years. Here was the home state of Pauline Han- son, the chip-shop owner and One Nation leader whose tough views on immigration were causing wringing of hands in liberal Sydney. The wine-grower had heard a Queenslander endorse her in terms that brought glory on her and the citizens of her homeland: 'That Pauline Hanson has a lot of good policies. I reckon if she was a man I would vote for her.' It sounded promising.

But even 'Deep North' had fallen. At Trinity Beach, five miles out of Cairns and 1,250 miles north of Sydney, pictographic signs erected by the local council told us what we should do (swim between the flags) and shouldn't (just about anything else). Frightening representations of marine stingers (jellyfish) and tidal undertows left us in terror of the sea. The beach obviously wasn't safe either: the council thoughtfully provided a warning picture of a coconut falling from a palm. It would be wise to obey the signs, said the accompanying rubric that way the council would not need to pros- ecute. The sand was too hot to walk on, but in case we hadn't noticed a chalk message from the lifeguards warned of the heat and instructed us to 'SLIP [on a shirt], SLAP [on a hat], SLOP [on sun-cream]', taking care to use nothing less than sun factor 15, as approved by Australian cancer authorities. A pensioner hunkered down in the sand, zinc cream smeared across his nose and lips, ears and neck protected by the flaps of a peaked hat, leathery trunk wrapped in a wetsuit.

And what about the carefree life on the ocean wave? As our yacht glided over the placid waters of the Great Barrier Reef, our skipper called us together for the 15- minute safety briefing demanded by the Queensland Transport Department. A list pinned in the wheelhouse detailed the minor medical conditions that might pre- vent our snorkelling among the fish.

Back in the safety of our apartment, a stocky middle-aged busybody in a bush hat repeatedly interrupted television pro- grammes to tell us to fence off our swim- ming pools. Children were drowning each year, he shouted urgently, Australia could be losing geniuses: 'They could have been Don Bradmans, Joan Sutherlands.' Up at the supermarket, the manageress spoke wearily of multiplying health regulations, zealously overseen by the council, that were threaten- ing to put food suppliers out of business.

Only in the Cairns Post was there sign of revolt. An angry reader bemoaned the ugli- ness of his garden now that he had been forced to erect a council-approved fence around the pool. Previous generations had regarded it as their duty to supervise their children properly. What business was it of the council? Another asked why the council fretted so much about crocodiles: 'I have a simple deal with the croc. I don't swim near his home, he doesn't come in my pub.'

But theirs were lonely voices. The state, local or federal, was busy. On our return to New South Wales, down a freeway with earnest and frequent appeals to motorists to drive for no more than two hours 'STOP — REVIVE — SURVIVE' — we found the man from Manly Council again.

Supported by volunteers from the surf rescue club, he scanned the waves, forcing errant bathers back between his flags with furious arm gestures and blasts on the whistle. At peak holiday hour, as the crowd threatened to burst from its narrow marine confines, he commandeered the beach Tannoy and played his finest stroke: 'We have reports of marine stingers in the water. All swimmers should come out of the water immediately.'

Kim Fletcher is deputy editor of the Sunday Telegraph.