A group of New Year’s celebrants in New Zealand employed some creative thinking — and a little heavy lifting — to evade a drinking ban on public holidays.
Merrymakers in the town of Tairua on New Zealand’s Coromandel peninsula built a sandbar — topped with a picnic table and an icebox full of illicit refreshments — in the middle of the estuary to ring in the New Year, the New Zealand Herald reports. The group reportedly claimed they were “in international waters” and not subject to a municipal drinking ban.
“We thought it would be a good laugh and the drinking ban would be a grey area if we were on our own island,” organizer Leon Hayward tells TIME. He and five friends, including three visiting Americans, built the platform using a combination of black sand and sea shells. Hayward said it took six hours to complete, and was finished off with wooden planks to help distribute the drinkers’ weight.
Thames-Coromandel Mayor Sandra Goudie told TIME that “locals and visitors alike” were amused, and commended the group’s “creativity” and innovative spirit.
“Everybody was quite entertained by it; it wasn’t hurting anybody. They were trying to claim it was in international waters but, of course, it isn’t,” Goudie told TIME. “They had this creation, that’s what we like to see – a bit of creative and innovative activity over the summer period.”
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Public drinking has been banned in Coromandel on public holidays and between between Dec. 23 and Jan. 6, since 2003, with violators facing a possible fine of $180 or arrest, the BBC reports. Recent years have seen a rash of arrests and of violent episodes at the seaside community, a popular holiday destination. This year the town of Whangamata held an alcohol-free beach party.
It seems unlikely that Tairua’s rogue revelers will face legal consequences. Waikato eastern area commander Inspector John Kelly said the impromptu island was a show of creative thinking. According to Stuff New Zealand, had the official known about the plan he “probably would have joined them.”