CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Holiday season is here!
That’s what residents of the Sunshine Coast town of Argybargy were saying today, after some spectacularly festive drama outside the surf club last night.
As a once squarely middle class coastal community currently in the goldilocks zone of a tourism-driven economic renewal, Argybargy is home to generational families who are now feeling the pinch of a rumbling housing crisis.
But with a string of local pubs that still let people drink like nobody is watching, the frontline of rowdy holidaymakers tend to behave far worse than they would in their own communities.
This clunky collision of much-needed economic activity and localism has created frustrations in town, which have subconsciously been passed down to the teenage boys, who are the only residents willing to do something about it.
As is tradition in coastal Australian towns, boys aren’t actually considered men until they’ve engaged in physical combat with fully grown adults.
And this exciting cultural rite-of-passage took place on the nature strip out the front of the Pacific View Hotel last night, as locals and tourists alike were treated to the evenly matched showdown of 5 drunken male tourists versus 6 slightly stoned teenage locals.
The brawl, which seemed to last for about 9-12 minutes, was apparently kicked off after one of the grown men made fun of a local boy’s flamboyant haircut – unwittingly challenging his masculinity, and therefore challenging the masculinity of his childhood friends.
After a few bottles were thrown back and forth, the full-blown melee began! Featuring some high-octane fly kicks, extremely questionable dogshots, and a lot of enthusiastic swearing.
The local cop, who is increasingly out of his depth with these seasonal waves of bucks parties and golf trips, was forced to ditch his breathalyser post and rush into the esplanade.
By the time he arrived, it was all over, with the young boys comprehensively defeating the overweight and puffing and drunken tourists.
After the initial buzz this morning, the town will now go completely quiet until it is confirmed that no criminal charges will be laid against the boys, at which point they will become local heroes for the rest of their lives.
