For most people, New Year’s Eve is a time for regeneration, renewal and regret. For my family, it is a time for revenge, retribution and smashing your little cousin in the testicles with a water bomb so hard that you set back the onset of puberty by another calendar year.
Please, permit me to explain.
Since 1977 my parents have hosted an enormous New Year’s Eve/Day party in Western Australia for my very large (115 cousins as of last counting) and very singular family, plus our solid following of friends and hangers-on. Like most Shea events, the party revolves around tables and tables of food, a toadstool-shaped esky my eldest uncle made in the 60s (“the mushroom” keeps Emu Export ice cold for days), singing, teary speeches and shouting over one another at the top of our lungs.
None of this is particularly odd for a new year celebration – besides the somewhat terrifying clown/magician my parents occasionally hired (replaced by an elderly Swiss opera singer after the clown put my little dog in the barbecue for a misjudged disappearing act). But what mostly sets ours apart from the pack is the decades-long water-bomb war we’ve been waging against each other and our town of Fremantle.
For close to 50 years, with only a recent abatement, Sheas aged two to 90 have been decking each other with a number of water bombs best described as “environmentally catastrophic”. Like any war it is complicated, factional and full of revisionary histories. Grudges go back decades, techniques and strategies are hotly debated and tales of near arrests and brutal drenchings are bandied back and forth into legend.
Chaotic? Sure. But there is, of course, procedure. Follow me through this Copacabana-style tracking shot while I explain how it works:
First, family clans – which can range from three to 15 members or more – park their cars up and down the street. Most have been at home that day 1) cooking and 2) filling multiple bin bags, washing baskets and buckets with hundreds upon hundreds of water balloons, which are generally stored within the boots of their cars.
The party proceeds in my folk’s back yard and, while the adults drink and eat, the young adults stand at the sink in the cellar filling still more balloons for what is essentially a communal pot. Children become increasingly excited and unhinged until finally, organically, groups of Sheas put down our plates (hard for us) and start lining along either side of the street, unloading waterbombs and bunkering down behind the vehicles.
No one knows who throws the first volley but once one bomb bursts against a bonnet, bonce or ballsack, it’s on for young and old.
Wise elders sit on the veranda, operating as quasi-umpires, keeping an eye out for traffic (no one could yell “CAR” like my Auntie Gwen) and innocent civilians (“PRAM!”), calling affairs to a halt if a family friend – unsure what they walked into – just wants to get back to their car and leave without being annihilated. Some neighbours take refuge in their homes; others come out to watch.
Right beside the veranda, an engineering corps of sorts fills balloons at the front yard spigot, helping to resupply the public stock alongside those running back and forth from the porch and the cellar.
At the heart of everything – as it is in most of our family traditions – is my mother’s giant white van. Sitting in front of the veranda, it is a mobile citadel protecting the observers on the porch. It is also a choice spot for the youngest among us to cower behind: the bombs explode especially loudly on its roof, and squatting there begging for mercy provides brief respite for our shell-shocked toddlers who naively believed their big cousins would go easy on them.
But for about 30 years from 1977, the van was also the place where interfamily conflict would end, and our war of outward aggression began. As hell rained down around her, my mother would take her position as the driver. The side door slid open, a healthy supply of balloons in bin bags were wedged between the two facing bench seats and anywhere between eight and 12 cousins piled in.
Then the bombing raids began.
Mum drove the van down the hill into town where – leaning from windows, holding each other by belts and collars, calling out targets like artillerymen – my family would lay siege to Fremantle and its drunken NYE revellers. It was a floodbath.
There were rules: no direct hits (aim for feet and walls), no homeless people, no pregnant women/babies, no people with disability, no one who looked dangerous (the bikie bars and club houses were off limits), no throwing when stopped at a red light (getaway is vital), and, even though they may be very tempting, no cops.
The rest were fair game. Nothing felt as good as bursting a balloon on a sloshed goofball’s boat shoes before zooming away yelling “Happy new year!” to a fading chorus of “FUCK YOU, YOU DOG –” etc.
At its height, there could be 10 or more raids on town a night, sometimes going until as late as 2am in what became a community event of sorts. Not everybody loved us but I remember no real complaints, other than the odd drunken man angrily hurling his longneck in our wake – although we did have to contend with the fireys of Fremantle, who each year would wait out front of the fire station for us with a small truck and a big hose, spraying us down as we drove past. (One year, Norma Snairy – an elderly family friend – didn’t wind her window up in time and a jet of water flooded the van and its occupants in a long overdue karmic comeuppance.)
When a raid ended, the van would pull up back in front of the house where the street war was very much ongoing; you’d have to all but duck and roll out as if you were parachuting from a troop carrier under heavy enemy fire.
The town raids wound down in the early 2000s after police pulled us over, grabbed two pregnant cousins from the van and threatened to arrest them. After that the violence turned inwards – and the interfamily street war picked up in ferocity.
Methods and technology changed over generations (mine incorporated water blasters and pistols, tote bags and throwing devices) and innovations (a dongle that fills 10 balloons at once) came and went, as did many loved ones. But always the next day, the gruelling clean-up began. There’s nothing like picking up 10,000 used water balloons from boiling hot cement on a 35C New Year’s Day to make you question a lot of things about yourself and the people who raised you.
While drafting this piece, I posted in various Fremantle Facebook groups, asking if any citizen or firefighter had any memories of being hit or hosing us down. I got no responses. It’s a different town these days and many who’d remember have moved away or passed on.
Even among the Sheas, the street war has all but ended: these days the teens are too glued to their iPhones to risk getting them wet and those of us in our mid-30s have more qualms about breaking the body and spirit of a toddler than our older cousins did in the 90s.
I wish I could say we had regrets and remorse but stirring up my family’s memories has resulted only in talk of a revival. So if you ever find yourself leaving one of Fremantle’s new craft breweries only to be suddenly struck and soaked at the feet, look up to catch a glimpse of a white van as it speeds away – and know that when we yelled out “Happy new year!”, we meant it.
