Coming from Perth Western Australia and remembering the Annual Birdman Rally from the 1970’s, I could not miss the the RedBull Flugtag.
Arrived at 11am. According to the announcements they were expecting 20,000 people but got 50,000. The crowd was stretched all around from Mrs Macquarie’s Chair to the Opera House. The Point of action being in the Harbour about half way down Mrs Macquarie’s Rd.
The second half was fine, but the first half was pure hell.
Yes this is going to be a whiny post.
Managed to find a spot, then some large Cruisers moved in blocking the view.
Found a new spot.
Then the Red-Bull boat parked in front of the ramp occluding the fun for the vast majority of the people that had not camped out from 6am.
If you were between the yellow lines, the Red Bull staff boat meant that you didn’t get to see a thing.
Then the crowd started to get ugly.
In the end I performed the classic outflanking maneuver.
Found a spot where through a tube of foliage you could just make out the action. But then of course as soon as the action started everyone stood up and we found ourselves behind a family who liked to brag about their level of education by calling everyone in front of them a ‘pack of c*^%s’ .
We ventured on, hid behind a steam powered zeppelin and ended up deep in the heart of the staging area and by pure luck managed to score a partially obscured view of a large LCD screen…
Which spent a lot of time not working…
But worked enough that we didn’t miss too much.
Although it went on and off just as people were about to smack into the water so many times that Kew wanted to crawl away into a paper bag.
If its on HTDV next year, I’m staying at home or at least taking a bottle of wine with me to dull the pain.
The Red Bull Flugtag organisers have a lot to learn about holding a Sydney event! What a sham!! How rude to shove that huge boat broadside in front of everyone that had been there for hours , 45 mins after the event was supposed to start. The spectators were furious .They seriously underestimated the crowd turnout. If we had realised it was just a private party for those on the red bull boat we would’nt have bothered going and wont be next year. Think we’ll drink V from now on.