I'm afraid the whole concept of schoolies leaves me cold.
Underage kids' binge drinking and illicit drug use seems to be tolerated, even expected, and almost a blind eye turned for the duration. I know there are plenty of arrests but it seems to get worse every year. I just don't understand.
Quite a few of my friends went to schoolies, I didn't. If any of them were drunk then from what I was told they were well looked out for and looked after. I know that they were well aware of the risks before they went. None of them did drugs.
Of course, I wasn't exactly in the "coolest" circle in the cohort (but not complete outcasts either).
Naturally, this account does
not necessarily represent the predominant behaviour at schoolies. One thing is for sure is that there has been a rise of the "toolies" both when we graduated and since then, i.e. older people who come to schoolies, mainly to prey on the real schoolies or generally act the fool and blend in to get away with it.
When I graduated high school, air travel and the associated expense still required conscious consideration (not as much when I was in primary school, but still), so the folks having the idea of simply shoving their kids onto a plane to go to Sydney, Melbourne, New Zealand or Bali was not something that came quickly to mind, unless they were loaded. Not that those deciding on going to the local schoolies had it easy either - accommodation gets back breaking expensive, especially if not planned well ahead of the event.
I suspect without increased police presence and so on for schoolies in the Gold Coast, the average rate of crime and incidents would go up a
lot more than now, particularly when you think the average crime rate of the Gold Coast has been increasing, too. In any case, safe or not, unless you've just graduated high school, it's probably a good time to think of somewhere else to go than the Gold Coast.
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