Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Leavers Week

Monday 24th November 2008
It started raining in May over here and it’s still raining, not only is it raining but quite often in the evening it is turning cold.
During the day the locals keep going back to wearing their coats, thankfully even the old girls who used to tell Ian that we needed more rain have stopped telling him, so either their water butts are full or they’ve drowned.
This is the longest winter either of us has ever had to endure, it’s not unbearable like a seven month winter would be in the UK, it’s more of a bloody inconvenience because the rain descends so quickly. The other day we went for a walk down the pub on a nice warm evening, before we got half way it was chucking it down with rain, now if that isn’t inconvenient we’d like to know what is.
We would like to point out that while we would prefer warmer, more consistent weather, we aren’t whinging about it anywhere near as bad as the whinging Aussies.

Fraser started his School Swimming lessons today, we’ve told him he’s got to work really hard to make up for what he has forgotten over the last year and also to help him in his swimming on Sunday mornings at Surf School.

School Leavers week started in earnest today, it is a weird phenomenon that appears to only occur in Australia.
It would appear that the idea of leavers week is that as many school leavers as possible descend on a small community that doesn’t wish to be descended upon, once in situ they get as drunk or drugged up as they possibly can, cause as much noise and destruction as they can without getting arrested, cost the local ratepayers a fortune for extra police and even get a free bus to drive them between Busselton and Dunsborough.
Now because of where we live, we don’t expect to have much bother with the leavers and in reality they probably cause less problems in a week than the average football (soccer) crowd of the same numbers (about 7 thousand) would do in ten minutes, it is like anything really those that want to gripe seem to have the loudest voices so invariably get all the press.

Now our gripe, which we don’t suppose for a minute the local authorities will take notice of, is that when we were looking at the possibility of going out on the piss in Dunsborough one night when Fliss was looking after the kids we couldn’t find a free bus anywhere, admittedly we didn’t phone the Shire but if we did we wouldn’t have got through because they don’t work on Saturday.
Instead we had to enquire about the cost of a Taxi, the cost of which turned out to be a bit unrealistic, so we ended up staying in Busselton.
We haven’t been here long, but we do pay our Rates, Business Rates, Local, National and Car Taxes, we employ local staff, contribute to their pension funds, be really nice to them (most of the time), Support the Schools that are educating our children and in turn support our Childrens Education, don’t Drink and Drive or do Drugs, Don’t damage other peoples property (for a laugh), try to be nice people despite the fact it won’t stop raining and still we can’t get a Free Bus Ride on a Saturday Night.
Instead we will just pay for the buses that a load of people that we are not likely to see again will use and abuse, so that they can go on the piss in Dunsborough while we are reduced to having a Funky night out in Busso.

The Café was quiet today, we reckon that a lot of our regular customers, who tend to be a bit older than most of us (even Ian), have not come in to town because of the bad press that has been printed about the School Leavers, and a fear of being accosted by rampaging youths.

Marisa went to Cubs tonight and should have been signing up for a Camp that is taking place next weekend, alas the event is so disorganised and possibly extremely under supervised that we have had to say no for safety reasons.
It is the first time that we have had to say no to one of the kids going on camp, but we explained our reasons to Marisa and she accepted it which was nice. Marisa is supposed to be going to Frasers Scout meeting tomorrow, so the thought of doing the things the big kids do probably made it easier to miss a camp.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bet your rain ain't as cold as mine is!

And I've got a website that you actually CAN link to now...
www.thecyclingmayor.com ..if you don't mind that is :)

Jennifer

Ganeida said...

Leaver's week is called *schoolies* over here & they all head for either the Gold Coast or Stradbroke Island ~ & don't get me started! How it was ever allowed to develop I do not know but every year someone dies from doing dumb stuff, lives get ruined. It is totally yuk & now no~one seems able to stop it.