Now the weather is warming up, police have implemented "Operation Beach Safe" across a number of Sydney’s beaches, including Cronulla.
Its mission is to deter the anti-social and criminal behaviour seen last season, which kept beachgoers away and hit local businesses hard.
This year, Cronulla shopkeepers are optimistic, that the people will come, “At the moment, it's very well controlled. There are the horses down there, the buggies. Everything's in order. It should be great,” shop owner Tina Tower said.
“I think it'll be good. I don't think there'll be any dramas. I mean a few people have come back and it all seems to be going alright.” Jason Bailey, a Cronulla Café owner commented.
But while the locals are confident that there won’t be repeat of last year's violence, Cronulla beachgoer, Smithy, says some tensions remain.
“It's inevitable. There's always been conflict at the beaches with locals and what they call tourists or outsiders coming in.”
On the fringes of the Sutherland Shire, lies multicultural Bankstown, where locals youths say they still feel unwelcome at Cronulla beach.
“We're not racist or anything but they are racist to us, ‘cos they don't like wogs,” Yasin Abdul said.
Ramsey Tahan says the racist behaviour at Cronulla hasn’t completed gone, “(It is) gonna be a bit safer but you still go down there and people give you dirty eyes, call you like wogs and Middle Eastern and so the racism still the same.”
But Sutherland Shire Mayor, David Redmon, has rejected allegations that the area is racist, “It's not typical of this community and really this community and its police will not tolerate those people coming here to use these good beaches as their battleground.”
The culture of racism and mutual suspicion between youths is what Kuranda Seyit, from the Forum on Islamic Australian Relations, has been working to break down, with youth reconciliation programs.
“We're getting young men from the South Western Sydney area with young men from the Sutherland Shire together, share a BBQ, talk about it and get to know one another and at the same time acquire some skills.”