In an uncharacteristically daft moment, I had the brilliant idea to go to Riverfire on Saturday. Usually having better things to do or far more content to watch it on tv in the comfort of my own home I thought it might be nice to go along this year and see it in all its splendour. I figured after the floods in the beginning of the year, this year’s show would be a spectacular and triumphant return for the river city and therefore worth the effort of actually being there. Idiot.

We heard on the radio around 2pm that Southbank was already starting to pack out so around 4pm we caught the bus in lugging all our supplies along with us. Expecting a sea of people, we got to Southbank about 4:30 to find there were still some good spots quite close to the river. I thought this was a good sign.
We were there in time to see the Superhornet F18’s fly over – they were pretty impressive. Then the Blackhawk helicopters that had been promising an ‘aerial spectacular the likes of which we’ve never seen before’ just kind of buzzed around. Oookaaay.

We set up our picnic rug and our awesome spread of crackers, dip, blue brie, camembert and chocolate and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves munching away. Until we had to go to the toilet. Finding one was pretty epic, but not quite as epic as lining up for them was. The line for the ladies as about a kilometre long – I kid you not. Even the line for the disabled toilet was about 500m long and not filled with disabled people. There were other toilet blocks but apparently they were ‘closed for repairs’. Very poor Southbank, very poor indeed.

Then there was the putting up with general society. I am not good at this, PARTICULARLY in crowd situations. We sat there watching in horror, generally appalled by bogans, screaming disobedient children and adults that just should not be parents. Seriously, making your 10 year old daughter strip naked in front of 1000s of people while she practically cries in mortification is not anyone’s idea of a nice family day out. Then there were the teenagers who thought being obnoxious dickheads was ‘cool’. Yeah, way to go f@*&face.

We hurriedly finished chomping down our swag so that we could stop sitting on the picnic blanket and use it for lifesaving warmth as the wind off the river was FREEZING! We thought we were going prepared by taking jackets but this wind would freeze the nips off an eskimo! We huddled in the blanket for an hour and a half until it was time for the fireworks. Glory be!

We watched the display with the occasional ooh and ahh but really, it was pretty lacking. Nothing particularly outstanding or spectacular. Just some fireworks. We sat in our spot, waiting as the crowds dispersed looking at each other going ‘surely that’s not it!?!?’ but the crowds were moving off and there was no sign of anything continuing.

Shaking our heads in disbelief that we had sat in the freezing cold for 3 hours putting up with douchebags for THAT we battled the crowds back to the bus station. I couldn’t remember the bus number we were supposed to catch, but luckily there were plenty of TransLink staff around to answer our questions. Except they were giving us the WRONG information. I couldn’t remember my bus number, but I KNEW it wasn’t that. I’ve NEVER caught that bus from or to my house. Seriously. Given the wrong information by 3 separate staff, who told us 3 different stories – all of which were wrong. Way to go TransLink. I shudder to think how many people caught the wrong bus. There was one family on our bus who got off at my stop after realising they were on the wrong bus. I could hear them saying ‘it’s going to take HOURS to get home!’ Poor people.

Luckily I don’t live too far from the city so it was only 8:30 by the time we got home. Phew, lets just get into our PJs, get into bed, watch some telly and drink some beer and put this whole ordeal behind us. So we switched on the telly and after a few minutes we could hear this odd noise. So we muted the tv only to hear fireworks going off in the distance. Apparently there is an early display for the kids and a later display for the adults. Are you for REAL!? No one told us this, this was in no way made clear at Southbank and there wasn’t a staff member, police officer or official in sight to help in anyway.

Wow.

Massive. Epic. FAIL. Southbank!

I hate you.

We looked at each other, laughing in maddened frustration and said ‘let’s NEVER do this again!’