ON returning from a six week trip to Australia to watch Test Cricket last weekend, my wife and I wer (From Warrington Guardian)

ON returning from a six week trip to Australia to watch Test Cricket last weekend, my wife and I wer

Apparently, shop and business premises had windows smashed and trees were uprooted - also damage was caused to the library.

This outrage compared starkly to our experience in Sydney on New Year's Eve when we were thrilled by a fireworks display, the like of which I have never seen before, watched by an estimated one million people, assembled on the Harbour's banks.

On our journey back to the hotel at well past midnight, the city was thronged with people of all ages and nationalities, many of whom had been clearly 'enjoying' themselves, yet we never felt threatened and there was no hooliganism or damage of any substance reported by the city police.

While Australia is a wonderful country with a mature outlook on life enhanced by a superb climate, wide open places and adult young people, it makes one's heart sink to realise the depths to which drugged and mindless yobboes with no parental guidance are trying to drag this country down.

The police must take more effective action to catch and punish these people and prevent this type of activity continuing, otherwise life in rural communities, such as the one to which we have just returned, is going to be totally spoiled.

M TALBOT-BUTLER

Sandown Crescent,

Sandiway.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.