Humans of 2042: Danny Lim

The man, the myth, the message board - we meet Sydney’s smiliest sign-wearer.

By Alec Smart

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Danny Lim is an 81-year-old Chinese-Australian who has gained notoriety for wearing signboards with cheeky messages – which have, on several occasions, got him in serious trouble! He’s often seen on the side of Sydney’s main roads and pedestrian thoroughfares – King St in Newtown, for example – waving at passing traffic and chatting with commuters whilst wearing a double-sided sign.

Danny is (in)famous for displaying messages with double entendres. A double entendre is defined as “a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, one of which is typically obvious, and the other often conveys a message that would be too socially unacceptable, or offensive to state directly.” 

That mixed messaging has led to controversy, most notably his two arrests and Court fines for Offensive Conduct in 2015 and 2019, both of which were reversed on appeal, although they utilised a certain notorious C-word. 

Despite the controversies, Danny has been photographed wearing his risqué signs whilst stood alongside numerous high-profile politicians. These include former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, former Labor Party leader Bill Shorten, senators Cory Bernardi and Kristina Keneally, and our current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – who posted his photo with Danny to his Facebook page in December 2017, describing Danny as “a special guest from the Inner West!”

Born 1944, Danny is a Chinese-Malaysian (and naturalised Australian) who emigrated to Australia in 1963, and found work as an electrical technician. Danny also served as a progressive independent councillor on Strathfield Council from 2008-2012. Garnering 13% of the vote, he refused to accept a salary during his period of tenure and ran on the policy of "openness, transparency, accountability and morality."

I interviewed Danny for this article, but he’s a chatty fellow with a tendency to speak in long monologues. Despite being on the phone with him for 80 minutes (we’re friends who’ve met several times), he went off on tangents, straying like an excited child in a fairground, and I didn’t get direct answers to the questions I sought.

In regards to his much-loved, cult-like status, Danny told me, “l joined Facebook in 2015, and in less than one year l had more than 5000 followers and had to start my Danny Lim Facebook page [to exhibit his cheeky sign-wearing publicity stunts]. And soon l had 2,500 followers! [Danny now has 5,600 followers] Some people offered to buy them [his posters] from me but l was never interested in financial gains.”

Popular culture 

Since his signboard stunts began attracting national attention, Danny has also appeared as a counter-cultural rebel in Australian popular culture. He’s often seen at the front of civil rights marches in the city – such as Black Lives Matter rallies for Indigenous rights and Palestinian support demonstrations.

In the wake of his first arrest in 2015, Danny featured in the short Brendan Toole documentary You Can, You Can’t (2018), examining the democratic right to freedom of speech in Australia.

Danny’s grinning face has appeared on an album cover – Indie rock band Sticky Fingers’ fifth studio recording Lekkerboy – with steel braces on his teeth spelling out the letters of the aforementioned ‘offensive’ C-word that got him arrested (see details of the arrests below).

Danny also appeared as a storyteller in the 2022 movie Three Thousand Years of Longing with his Chihuahua-Pomeranian X dog Smarty (which passed away in Jan 2021). 

Written and directed by the Academy Award-winning George Miller (responsible for the Mad Max quintet, Happy Feet and Witches of Eastwick), and starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton, Three Thousand Years of Longing centres on a woman who hallucinates demons. 

During a trip to Istanbul, she purchases an ancient bottle containing a genie, who grants her three, albeit conditional, wishes, which leads to all sorts of trouble. 

Miller also gave Danny a cameo in his 2024 film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.  Danny also had a cameo in season 2 of Australian teenage drama series Heartbreak High, in the episode The Feelings Pit. His character carries a cassette player playing It’s that Time by DJ Daddy Trance in Sydney Park, Alexandria, while Jett James (actor William McDonald) dances alongside him on the grass. 

In January 2019, mural artist Scott Marsh, arguably the Australian Banksy of politically astute social commentary, painted Danny on a wall in Chippendale, central Sydney. 

Located on the side of Cafe Giulia at 92 Abercrombie Street, the large artwork depicts Danny Lim with his dog Smarty, holding a sign that says "Peace Smile Be Kind", underscored with the risqué slogan that got Danny in trouble: “C∀n’t say C∀n’t”.

A halo was later painted above Smarty’s head after he passed away.

Danny recalled the mural painting: “Scottie Mash rang me to have lunch with him at Burwood. During lunch he told me he wanted to paint a mural of me and I refused, then added I had better let him do one before they [his detractors] shoot me!

“After lunch he drove me back to Strathfield and l showed him a couple of my new signs and he chose one for the mural. He painted the mural on Thursday and on the following Monday morning he rang me to inform me that the media would be there…” 

(I subsequently photographed Danny and Smarty stood in front of the mural, replicating Marsh’s painted pose, for an Inner-West newspaper.)

Signboard notoriety

In August 2015, in the first of his two signboard-related arrests, Danny was charged and fined $500 for Offensive Conduct after publicly wearing a large A1-sized sign in Edgecliff that called Tony Abbott, the ruling Prime Minister of Australia, a 'C∀nt'. 

The sign read: “Peace Smile. People can Change. Tony you C∀nt.”

The fine was paid in 56 minutes through a GoFundMe campaign organised by a legion of generous supporters.

The play-on-words (inverting an A to resemble a U), was deemed to be provocative and unacceptable. However, in a 29 August 2017 legal appeal, District Court Judge Andrew Scotting overturned the conviction, ruling that the previous magistrate “had not stated a reason why a person would have been offended.” 

He added, “while the conduct was inappropriate and in poor taste, I am not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt it was offensive.”

On 11 January 2019, Danny was again arrested for wearing a sign that was deemed ‘offensive’ whilst standing in a public area in Barangaroo in central Sydney. The sign on this occasion was a little more provocative, reading “SMILE C∀N’T! WHY C∀N’T?”

Video footage of the arrest – which involved three NSW Police officers – attracted over a million views on Facebook and hundreds of supporters joined a demonstration outside Central Sydney Police Station. 

Danny was again convicted for offensive behaviour, but launched another appeal and in a hearing at Downing Street Court on 30 Aug 2019 – during which I sat alongside Danny for the duration – magistrate Jacqueline Milledge overturned the conviction. In her summing-up she criticised the police officers’ “heavy-handed and unnecessary” arrest of Danny and referred to the sign as “provocative and cheeky, but not offensive.”

The C-word

The word ‘cunt’ is Germanic in origin, probably from Old Norse ‘kunta’ (although numerous spellings and pronunciations appeared in several Germanic languages) and was likely brought to Britain by the Anglo Saxons, who arrived after the departure of the Romans in 410 CE. 

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest traceable version of the written form of the word in Britain was a street in the city of Oxford called Gropecunt Lane around 1230 CE (since renamed Grove Passage or Magpie Lane).

London had several streets named Gropecunt Lane, the first recorded in 1279 as Gropecontelane and Groppecountelane in what is now Cheapside area 1km north-west of London Bridge. It was situated between Bordhawe Lane (that evolved into the word ‘bordello’) and Puppekirty (‘poke skirt’) Lane.

These explicitly-named streets were all what we would now call ‘red light districts’, where prostitutes operated legally.

The word was not considered vulgar in the Middle Ages, and 14^th century social chronicler Chaucer has frequently been described of using it liberally in his famous Canterbury Tales collection of stories (c1390). 

In fact, Chaucer used the word ‘queynte’, which meant ‘a clever or curious device or ornament’ (nowadays spelt ‘quaint’), although queynte was often utilised then as a euphemism for a woman’s genitalia. 

It wasn’t until the mid-17^th century that the word began to take on a more offensive nomenclature, eventually evolving into a spiteful insult for women.

Physical assaults on Danny

In November 2022, the then-78-year-old Danny required hospital treatment after he was slammed face-first onto the concrete walkway in the Queen Victoria Building (QVB) in Central Sydney.  Danny was wearing one of his cheeky signs when a security guard requested that he not wear it on the premises. 

Two NSW Police officers were then called, who intercepted Danny and violently assaulted him after claiming he "failed to comply with a move on order.” 

The officers grabbed his arms and flung him face-first onto the tiled floor – which was filmed by a witness, criminal lawyer Chris Murphy. When Danny’s cheek was split and blood flowed onto the tiles, the officers “discontinued” the arrest, and an ambulance was called to take Danny to St Vincent’s Hospital with bleeding on the brain. 

Months later Danny was still walking with support sticks due to the bruising he sustained, and it took him a while to recover from the concussion, including difficulty speaking. 

In April 2023, Danny needed hospital treatment again after a disagreement with a security guard at Barangaroo – close to where he was first arrested by police in 2015.  Although there was no physical contact between him and the guard, Danny reportedly had a panic attack due to anxiety over the QVB violent face-plant five months earlier. 

Danny told the Daily Mail, “I have had enough of all this shit after what happened last time. I'm a bit shaken now because it brings back so much memory.” A spokesperson for the security company, Placemaking NSW, told the Daily Mail, “We are aware of the issue and we are very sorry to hear about any distress caused to Mr Lim.”

NSW Ambulance took Danny to a hospital for observation.

On 22 September 2023, Danny, now 79 years of age, was physically assaulted at Strathfield railway station by a 66-year-old Chinese man. The assailant allegedly objected to Danny campaigning for a ‘Yes’ vote in the Australian Indigenous Voice referendum (aka the First Nations’ Voice to Parliament).

Danny was taken by ambulance to Concord Repatriation General Hospital where he received a CAT scan to assess a head injury and an eye bleed. 

After studying CCTV cameras, Auburn Police arrested Ming Wiseman, 66, in Homebush West and charged with Assault Occasioning Actual Bodily Harm. During his first appearance at Burwood Local Court, Ming approached the media singing Edelweiss from the 1965 film The Sound of Music, followed by the 1961 Elvis Presly hit Can’t Help Falling In Love. 

Danny claimed Wiseman had taken issue with him previously over his wearing a signboard with the words “Smile C∀n’t.” Wiseman claimed Danny’s injuries were self-inflicted, but he was eventually found guilty of assault at Burwood Local Court on Monday 6 May 2024.

Wiseman, who promoted his own political party, the Enjoy Share Party, in Court, was convicted and fined $200. Magistrate Vivien Swain also made an 18-month Apprehended Violence Order (AVO restraint) against Wiseman for Danny’s protection.