Look what they done to our Scarbs, Ma ...

If you do manage to beat the crowds at Brighton, it’s only a matter of time before families arrive with their umbrellas and wind shields, and set up camp right on top of you. The newcomers don’t have the sense of personal space that was once understood and observed as basic beach etiquette in these parts. And they seem loud, graceless, somehow disrespectful, assuming possession of their adopted beach as a right rather than a privilege, as if they’ve merely moved from Durban to Capetown. They have no concept of paying their dues, and no inkling that they have moved in on a place special to locals who were there long before them.

I am being a tad unreasonable. I know that. I don’t care. These people have usurped my sacred site (a sadly familiar refrain in this country).

But what does it matter? Scarbs will soon be no more anyway. Late last month, despite years of persistent and sometimes rowdy protest from local ratepayers, the State Government approved the City of Stirling’s plan to allow buildings of up to 12 storeys along West Coast Highway and the Scarborough foreshore. Locals have fought the Council for years over this. A little beachfront hamburger joint beat off Bond and his millions, but corporate power is but a fart in a cyclone next to that of local councils, it seems.

Those who understand what Scarbs was know that multi-storey development will destroy what remains of its essential character - which no other beachside suburb in Perth comes close to.

I’m not going to attempt to be precise in defining that character. If you share my experience of Scarbs, there is no need. If you don’t, there is no point.

I may be coming across as a middle-aged nostalgic pining for my wild youth, but that’s not it at all. I was always on the fringes. I attended my share of Stanley Street parties, but was never one of the wild ones. I took my place in stoned, drunken queues at the pizza joints on Sunday nights, stoned and drunk. But I was not one of the cool tanned surfs with straw hair and a hot pouting babe incidentally draped over them. Not one of the leather clad Harley Davidson crew who were top of the pecking order at the Scarbs Sunday Session. Not a hoon, or a dealer or a bogan. Not even a larrikin. I was just one of many who liked the atmosphere of Scarbs. Who lived there in share accommodation in my youth. And who returned with magnetic inevitability to the beach every summer as the years went by, to find sanctity and solace and something damned close to religion in the cold, clean, boiling surf with the community of regulars who all recognised each other, watched each other age year by year, but never spoke.

The Brighton regulars are gone now. Or maybe they’re still there somewhere, lost in the crowd. If ever we see each other again, we’ll know what each other is thinking. And still, not a word will be spoken.

To the young guys and girls who gave their weekends for the last two summers, collecting the signatures of beachgoers at Brighton and Scarborough for petitions that were ignored, the City of Stirling says “fuck you”. To the ratepayers who protested loud and long at Council meetings, “fuck you”, too. The City of Stirling knows what’s best for you, and the bucks you pay them in rates. Your opinions do not count.

Soon, there will be nothing left of Perth’s last character beach. In its place, there’ll be just another yuppified coastal strip of the sort you might find anywhere in the urbanised world. Monied types and tourists will strut their stuff, flitting in and out of expensive shops and restaurants. Maybe there’ll be some big tasteful fine-dining landmark constructed close to the beach, where the hoons used to do 360s through flaming petrol - a scaled-down replica of the Taj Mahal, perhaps.

And Peters By The Sea will stand resolute, a lonely shrine to the memory of Scarbs, poignant to the few who remember and care, unnoticed by the rest.