Letter Of The Month: Pearl vs. Westfield

By Daniel Lewis on September 27, 2011 in Other

Pearl Bullivant’s spray against Westfield (The Beast, September 2011) demonstrates the tall poppy syndrome, where success in this country is viewed as something to be despised, lives on.

Pearl longs for “a world without Westfield” and imagines Bondi Junction returned to Waverley Council’s control. Ah yes. The same council who cries poor and jacks up rates despite making over twenty million bucks in parking fines alone, each year. The same council that took half of the carpark under Syd Einfeld Drive for itself as a depot, forcing park and ride drivers to use….Westfield’s carpark, netting Westfield not one red cent (except if you stay for two hours and five minutes, Westfield will charge you six or seven bucks). Whereas one minute over two hours in the council carpark and bammo, $86 parking fine thank you very much. Still resent Westfield?

A Westfield-free Jungo would be as charming as the windswept wasteland that is (and always was) Bondi Junction Mall and the Bondi Junction end of Oxford Street. More dodgy Asian massage joints anyone?

Or perhaps it would be more like Waverley’s crown jewel – a sad wasteland called Campbell Parade, which admittedly has a nice sandy bit but is otherwise an unclean, hardly memorable eyesore, especially when compared to the world’s other famous beach areas (and not so famous like Hastings Street, Noosa or Broadbeach, Surfers Paradise, neither of which have parking meters or parking officers).

Oh sure. Let’s give Waverley Council more to manage. Please.

Pearl, who describes herself on her Twitter page as an “Old, leftie, hippie” would rather slag off Frank Lowy for making Bondi Junction a destination rather than a train station.

Lowy got off the boat in this country penniless and look at what he has achieved. What have you done Pearl, besides grumble and complain? And what the hell is a “Member for Clovelly” anyway? Or am I really the first to recognise her terribly clever hoax?