”It’s absolutely bloody fantastic,” says 17-year-old Adam Frew. ”I’ve just finished school, it’s the start of the summer, and I’m standing on a beach with 20 000 chicks. Life could not get any better.”
Along with nearly 50 000 other school leavers, he has come to Surfers Paradise to celebrate schoolies week, a rite of passage in Australia since the 1980s. In contrast to the formalised ritual of American prom nights, schoolies tends to be a debauched celebration of drink, drugs and sex.
Nowhere is it celebrated more vigorously than on the Gold Coast, a 65-kilometre strip of beaches and hotels south of Brisbane that is Australia’s answer to Marbella. Thousands dance in front of live stages on the beach; clubs and pubs are open till the small hours; and the beachfront throngs with tens of thousands of young people.
The event has grown since a local travel agent brought 180 school leavers up from Sydney in the 1980s. As the parties have got bigger, safety fears have begun to cloud the event. Worries centre around ”toolies”, men in their late 20s and 30s who turn up looking for teenage sex or valuables.
After last year, when four people were stabbed and teenagers brawled with police on the beach, security this year is being run like a military campaign.
School leavers are marked out by fluorescent wrist-bands and necklace ID tags, a 24-hour ambulance station has been set up, and nearly 300 police officers have been drafted in to walk the beat in Surfers Paradise.
Police 4WDs constantly circle on the floodlit beach. Under-18s caught drinking in public face A$225 fines, although drinking parties go on in hotel rooms and no one The Guardian spoke to claimed to be getting through the evening without alcohol.
”Monday night was my best night so far,” said Peter McFarlane, 17, from Brisbane. ”I can’t remember any of it.”
”It’s completely paranoid,” said Jodie Cameron, an 18-year-old from Lismore, in northern New South Wales. ”The police are on our backs about everything. For crying out loud, people come out here to have fun, but they’re constantly throwing it in our faces that we’re not old enough.”
Her boyfriend Adam (22) also from Lismore, said the police presence made schoolies boring compared with previous years. ”It’s ruined it. I’ve been coming here since I was 18, and if it’s like this for much longer the people are just going to stop coming,” he said.
Crime rates in the Gold Coast peak around schoolies. Between 1996 and 2001 the Gold Coast saw 14 rapes and 40 other sexual offences in November and December, as well as nearly 500 assaults and 5 000 disorder offences.
But in the past few days, several teenage girls have complained about sleazy behaviour from policemen, and one 38-year-old senior officer has been suspended after allegations that he and three off-duty colleagues invited four girls back to their rented apartment on Wednesday night and allegedly plied them with drink. He allegedly allowed one girl to fire an unloaded gun and made sexual comments.
Brisbane residents regard many of those who make the trip to the Gold Coast for schoolies as rich kids, and corporate sponsors have been keen to get at the teenagers.
The 50 000 schoolies are expected to spend A$50m (£20m), or around £400 a head, in less than a week of partying. – Guardian Unlimited Â