JAWN's Curated

I remember between years 6 and 9, which would have been 2011 to 2014, Housos was commonly spoken about amongst my friends and I. We would update each other on new episodes the next day at school. Reflecting back, it was probably because I was living in housing commission in Riverwood at the time. For the non-Australians, ' housos ' is slang for housing commission, otherwise known as public housing, which is provided to low-income families and individuals to prevent homelessness. It’s generally quite synonymous with dr*g abuse, mental health issues and junkies. I won’t unpack that too deeply here, as I intend to explore this topic individually in the future, especially given my lived experience. But it is important context when talking about this show. Housos was wild. I used to stay up to 10PM just to wait for it to air on the SBS channel on TV. The show simply would not fly in today’s climate of political correctness, and I don’t know how they managed to even convince networks...

Growing up in Plumpton, then Riverwood, then Blacktown, if you saw a Holden Commodore on the road, you could pretty much guess the type of person behind the wheel. Their appearance, personality and values. And no, that’s genuinely not an exaggeration. The car had a strong association with bogans and housing commission suburbs.  While I am generalising to a great deal, families and blue-collar workers drove Commodores too for the convenience and cost aspect, but for the most part, the car carried a very specific personality with it. The media loved to hate the Holden Commodore. It was quickly branded a hoon car, and to be fair, the stereotype didn’t come from nowhere. The classic Commodore driver was doing burnouts, drifting through suburban roads, overtaking a car doing the speed limit on the wrong side of the road in a 50 zone, or just being an outright f*ckwit followed by some road rage. It was genuinely common to see Commodores with dents, missing panels, or mismatched doors rol...

It’s now ten years since 2016.  Back then, I was living in Blacktown, moving around the Blacktown local government area (LGA). Postcode pride has always been a thing, no matter what part of Australia you’re from, and in the Greater Western Sydney region, for many people, it meant everything. 2016 is pure nostalgia now. Snapchat was the place. You’d jump on Snap Maps and just scroll through hotspots, tapping into random stories. You were guaranteed to find something wild somewhere in the Blacktown LGA. For those who are not familiar with the Blacktown LGA, this included suburbs like Mount Druitt, Quakers Hill, Riverstone, Seven Hills and its smaller encompassing suburbs that were not fully established yet. City Beach Blacktown was right beside the shopping mall entry. Culture Kings and Insport were some of the go-to spots for adlays and eshays. And honestly, brands like Le Coq Sporti, Lonsdale, Ellesse and Henleys carried Insport as a retailer, as these were all brands emblematic to...

Growing up in Western Sydney, I always remember seeing Toyota Tarago's across suburbs with strong Polynesian and South East Asian communities. As an affordable seven seater that was cheap to maintain and simultaneously reliable (like practically all Toyota’s lol), the Tarago was a silent iconic vehicle – one that earned recognition through sheer practicality. However, it doesn’t get enough praise for its impact, such as the Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon's did.  The Uce Mobile Across Western Sydney, the Tarago became symbolic of a very specific demographic. Dominating the roads on Sundays on its way to church, it wasn’t unusual to see a church car park where 90 per cent of the vehicles were Toyota Tarago’s. Parked at a shopping centre, and with no intention to offend, you’d sometimes watch several 6-foot usos step out and instinctively think, “dayum”. Growing up, I remember hearing various nicknames for the Tarago. Some of the nicknames which I can somewhat recall: “FOB car, ...