The downtrodden of Macquarie Fields

At first glance, Macquarie Fields looks much like any other Australian suburb. White picket fences enclose brick bungalows and gardens bright with hibiscus and bougainvillea. Of the 4800 homes, 1400 are rented from the state housing commission while the rest are privately owned.

Wild cockatoos squawk in the trees and the smell of eucalyptus is pervasive. The lawns and driveways may be overgrown, and there's rubbish on the street corners but, with a bit of smartening up, Macquarie Fields could pass as a set for Neighbours.

But the suburb's deep-seated social problems are a world away from the laidback lifestyle portrayed in Australia's favourite soap. Graffiti and the nearby remains of a burnt-out car are chilling signs that something is seriously amiss in Macquarie Fields. The words are daubed in blood-red paint along a wooden fence: "Cops kill kids and These f***ing pig dogs will pay."

The depressed suburb on the farthest fringes of Sydney's great sprawl erupted into violence this week after the deaths of two teenage joy-riders in a police chase. Matt Robertson, 19 and Dylan Raywood, 17, died last weekend when the stolen car they were driving hit a tree at 160 km/h as they were being pursued by police.

Their deaths sparked four nights of rioting in which about 200 youths went on the rampage, hurling petrol bombs, fireworks and rocks at police in riot gear. Several officers were injured, cars were set on fire and crowds gathered to watch the street battles.

The violence, more reminiscent of London or Los Angeles, shocked Australians, unaccustomed to serious urban unrest. Police arrested 27 people, charging them with more than 80 offences, including rioting, assault and affray.

The riots follow similar violence in the inner-city suburb of Redfern last year, after a 17-year-old Aboriginal boy who believed he was being chased by police crashed his bicycle and impaled himself on a fence post, later dying in hospital. This week's riots were motivated not by race, however, but by poverty and social discontent.

An air of sullen hostility hangs over the area in the aftermath of the violence, with police cars patrolling the streets and officers watching the home of the alleged driver of the crashed car, 20-year-old Jesse Kelly. Police have been hunting Kelly since he fled the scene of the crash, leaving his two dead friends in the twisted wreckage of the car.

The tree which the teenagers hit has become a makeshift shrine, covered in flowers, cards, and calls for vengeance. "We will get them", one card warned. "RIP Matt and Dylan". The boys want revenge, Kelly's mother, Debbie, 39, told journalists. The police treat them like dirt.

While much of the country rides the coat-tails of a 14-year economic boom, for a growing under-class the Australian dream has soured. When it was built in the 1970s Macquarie Fields was touted as a model suburb. But the palm trees and bucolic street names mask a depressing spiral of welfare dependency, broken homes, drug addiction and lawlessness.

Unemployment is a serious problem there, despite Australia as a whole experiencing an acute labour shortage. The jobless rate among school leavers is 25 per cent, five times the national average.

Crime is rife, with a robbery and burglary rate twice the average for New South Wales. One-parent families make up more than half the households on the estate.

It is a part of Sydney no tourist sees, adrift in a sea of sun-baked suburbia and separated from the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge by nearly 50km of shopping malls, freeways and housing estates.

The inhabitants of the never-ending suburbs of outer Sydney are derided as Westies by the rest of the city, which sneers at their low incomes and modest homes.

"Life here is putrid," said Bob Clarke, a resident of 32 years. "What's here for kids? Nothing. Why wouldn't they go off the rails?"

Over the years the people with get-up-and-go got up and left, the mayor, Brenton Banfield, said. Now it's a dysfunctional community united by disadvantage.

"That would change the whole social mix of the place. We need to disperse the disadvantaged people throughout the community."

 

But such grandiose plans may take years to come to fruition. In the meantime, many locals accuse the police of escalating the tension in the hours immediately after the crash by acting with brutality.

"The way the police treat people around here is disgusting," Colin Reck, 53, a disability beneficiary, said. "They assume that everyone is a druggie and whenever there's trouble they go in, boots'n'all. It's an us-and-them mentality."

A 32-year-old Uruguayan-born woman, who asked not to be named, said: "I saw one of the dead boys' friends approach the wrecked car, but he was pushed to the ground by two police officers and punched in the face.

"There's going to be a scar on the minds of these kids forever. People around here are very, very angry."STANDING beside the remains of a burnt-out car, 24-year-old Kylie Hume, a single mother, dismisses such accusations.

"The police are just doing their job. This talk of provocation is bullshit. The boys are troublemakers."

The premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, said there was no excuse for such lawlessness in Australia's largest city.

"I will not have it said this behaviour is caused by social disadvantage," he said, pointing out that A$49 million ($52.4 million) had been spent improving housing in the area over the last eight years.

"A lot of people grow up with social disadvantage but they don't go out and fling bricks at police and create fires and make Molotov cocktails."

As the authorities argue over how the riots could have been prevented, locals portray a way of life which is far removed from the suburban idyll of soaps such as Neighbours and Home and Away, Australia's most successful cultural exports.

"If you go to a job interview and say you're from Macquarie Fields they immediately think you're stupid or lazy or both," Mr Reck said.

"You're immediately labelled."

Jennifer, a 24-year-old receptionist, feels like a prisoner in her own home.

"I don't go out at night any more and even when I go out during the day I watch my back," she said, declining to give her surname for fear of retribution from the local thugs.

"I've lived here all my life and this is the most violent I've ever seen it."

Eucalyptus Drive may look like Ramsay Street, but the two are poles apart.