Coogee Media

One of the First
Few people in Coogee remember that one of the first major organised protests against racially selected, whites-only sporting teams competing in Australia occurred at Coogee Beach on March 27, 1971. It happened during a surf carnival and competition called The Third Test Between Australia and South Africa. The protest was not aimed at surfing, surf carnivals, or the South Africans, but because the white-only South African team had been racially selected as part of the Apartheid system in South Africa. This cruel system of racial segregation gave non-whites unequal access to the political and economic life of their country.

The UN General Assembly in 1968 urged boycotts of sports contacts. Large scale, vigorous anti-Apartheid demonstrations swept Britain in 1969/70, setting the scene for momentous events in Australia in the 1970s. In Sydney in 1969/70 there were demonstrations against Apartheid politicians, all-white netballers, surf lifesavers, tennis players and golfer Gary Player. A turning point was the June 1969 visit of South African trade minister Haak. Four hundred people gathered in Australia Square and marched, disrupting traffic.

A demonstration in 1970 at a swimming competition to send Australians to South Africa saw protest outside, while inside, students threw black dye into the pool, forcing its abandonment. Support for protests snowballed in 1970/1 against tennis and basketball tours, and then the demonstration at Coogee looked like becoming a major event.

Leaflet produced for the program for the protest at Coogee

Sutherland Shire had previously denied access to their beach at Cronulla for any racially-selected teams, one reason why Coogee was made a site for a "test". Events were held at Manly, Dee Why and Wollongong, the Warringah Council gave the South Africans a civic reception.

Police carry arrested protestors away from Coogee Beach

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that there were about 500 protestors and about 100 police at Coogee on the day. Those present also included, as one of the leaders of the protest movement, Meredith Burgman, who would later have a distinguished political career and become President of the NSW Legislative Council. She discovered later, she recounted in her book Dirty Secrets : Our ASIO Files, ASIO agents also attended.

Part of the beach had been fenced off with temporary steel fencing, which photographs tend to suggest included rolls of barbed wire, to which the protestors paid sustained and vigorous attention. A handful of the demonstrators managed to infiltrate the competition area and lay down in the sand in the path of the marching South African team, who marched on regardless. A team of Maroubra life savers, carrying the South African surf boat, charged into the crowd of demonstrators (police attention was distracted by other events at that exact moment). Six demonstrators, four women and two men, including Meredith Bergman, were arrested and taken to the Waverley police station.

The reaction of some Coogee locals, no matter what their political outlook, was a mixture of derision and mild anger. "Those mugs should keep politics out of sport" was a familiar cry. Meredith Burgman would later say "You can't keep those Aussie blokes from their sport".

Later in the year, national protests greeted the arrival of the South African Rugby team. Events showed that the sporting teams, despite denials from many sports administrators, were racially selected. On Sir Donald Bradman's recommendation, the proposed 1970-71 South African cricket test series in Australia was cancelled.

Almost half a century later opinions have changed. No "Aussie sporting bloke", today, would believe they should compete on anything other than merit; the protestors are generally seen to have been on the right side, and as events would show, on the winning side!

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