desmonds

So funny to read the wildly diverging opinions here. Nine months in I’m definitely feeling the pull of the extremes in this place…

… on the one hand yes there’s a pretty decent cultural scene centred on the university and the art gallery. There are some fun music festivals, a thoughtful (if small) business community, and a good contingent of socially responsible people and students, good turnouts to climate action protests and progressive, multicultural enclaves.

But for me this is overbalanced by the deplorables who dominate Wollongong’s day-to-day proceedings. This town is rife with the sorts of people you’d just rather not have to deal with - the unemployable deros and junkies, the pathetic emo kids who have already ruined their lives with face and neck tattoos, the insecure little road-raging wife-beating wrap-around-sunglasses-wearing men, the ruined and bitter women still working in retail into their 50s even though the world has turned them into misanthropists, and the Bob Jelly-emulating local officials doubling as developers and real estate agents. There is no old money establishment to keep things on an even keel because anyone who can afford to leaves. The dull, deserted streets are lined with a mix of McMansions, asbestos-infested deceased estates and buffalo grass, the shopping areas are mausoleums to the lives their patrons expected to have, and the whole city is traversed by a main highway and a population of rescue dogs that together provide a 24/7 brain-zapping climate-frying aural accompaniment.

Unfortunately the commute to Sydney is just long enough to be soul-destroying - and yet the only way to survive this place is to get out as much as possible. Your kids will be stuck here all the time of course, and as a result your son will become a moustachioed alcoholic with an estranged offspring by 19 - manifestly the best year of his life - and your daughter will come to rely solely on her sexual attractiveness in order to get ahead. Overall I wouldn’t recommend moving here…