Boxing Day with Boxwars

So, I get a text message from my friend Kerry that reads “Boxing day BBQ in Caulfield park featuring boxwars as the entertainment. 4pm, byo full Esky and meat. Cricket updates included.”. What I took this to mean was that there was a BBQ being put on by the community and there would be a band named Boxwars playing at this BBQ.

So we pack up the cooler (Esky) with some snacks, beer, wine and pull up to Caulfield park to find 100-150 people, many of them decked out in cardboard armour of one kind or another, some dinosaurs, some gladiator types, two guys on stilts, etc…


At first everyone is just milling about with a certain buzz of anticipation. My friend Kerry and some ultimate folk are hanging out having a few beer, they see us coming and start laughing as we approach with our three kids in tow. Not sure if they were expecting us to come on our own, or were simply going to enjoy seeing the kids reactions to the battle about to begin…The announcer starts introducing the "warriors" by name with a megaphone and then the battle begins. In any event, the kids loved it, Jeff was amused (not an easy task) and I got to take a bunch of random pics. The pictures do not do the chaotic battle justice. People were wacking eachother with huge concrete mixing cardboard tubes. We surmised that you were permitted to continue to battle as long as you had some piece of cardboard still clinging to your body, otherwise you could steal a piece off of the ground and claim it as your own and keep laying the beats on people…a strange and unique experience.
Wyatt was of course, soaking it all in. After the battle was over, we rummaged through the remains and took some photos. Wyatt found a helmet, then proceeded to charge at me - if he weighed more than 40 pounds he might have leveled me. Not hard to imagine where he got this idea - don't call CAS, they won't come all of this way to remove our kids. Then I got the magic helmet and Rowan thought it would be a good photo op to pretend to tackle me - which ended in a sad fall to the ground...

Then my cool single pals moved to the adult BBQ pits away from kids and we moved our munchkins over to Caulfied park for some more play time and our own KFC dinner! Another memorable evening in Melbourne!