Australia Day: Aftermath

According to the latest reports 350,000 people watched the skyshow last night. I suppose statistically-speaking having a few hundred rowdies is not bad. Mounted police and officers with shields and batons had to break up a large group brawling in St James Mitchell Park - the same place where we had brekkie yesterday btw (those funky Rotarians really know how to party). Another 200 dispersed in Russell Square, Northbridge. A guy stabbed at Vic Park transfer station. Another aiming for a Darwin award by smashing a bus window in Como and severing an artery. So what can we take from all this?

The so-called alcohol ban is a major joke. A PR exercise at best. We saw groups of teens and tweens lugging eskies filled with beer, spirits and just about every other type of alcoholic beverage down to the foreshore. Others openly carried cartons of mid-strength (not much alcohol in that, I swear, officer). And that was just what we saw in the morning and early afternoon.

And where was the much vaunted 900 police that were supposed to be patrolling yesterday? We saw two bicycle cops and that was at 10am.

On tonight's news, we'll hear the same old threats that next year's skyshow might be cancelled - they're still considering it, we'll have to re-evaluate it closer to the event - but all-in-all it will be exactly the same next year and the next and the next. The Skyshow has become such a part of Perth culture it would be a brave government that cancelled it. And the police and government know what to expect. They've done this for over 20 years now. And a few hundred out of 350,000 isn't too bad, right?

Unless those few hundred are fighting in your backyard.

Addendum I discovered where the mounted police were hanging out during the Skyshow: outside of our place. There is horseshit everywhere.