‘Gangs’ of adults telling kids off for being kids are just as bad as the young | David Penberthy

Once again, the true victims of Adelaide’s NIMBY epidemic have been revealed, writes David Penberthy.

It has long been taken as given that the youth of the day are more ill-mannered and listless than previous generations.

Barely a day passes without stories about juvenile criminals and youth gangs wreaking havoc on the streets, terrorising the innocent and generally lowering the tone.

The worst “gang” I’ve seen in Adelaide this week is different. Not in a behavioural or criminal sense.

Like the youth gangs, these people swear, make threats, push people around and harass strangers by abusing them and grabbing their possessions.

The difference with this gang? They’re all aged over 60. I write of course about that horrible bunch of bullies who were caught on camera monstering a couple of school kids for the apparent “crime” of fishing at Delfin Island in West Lakes.

It sounds comical, this bunch of ageing ratbags carrying on like they’ve escaped the local retirement village and joined the Crips.

Adults filmed stopping children from fishing in West Lakes. Picture: Facebook

As The Advertiser reported on Wednesday, they flung a kid’s bag, threatened to destroy their other possessions, and rained threats and profanities including “the police is on their way”, “you take this phone away”, “piss off”, “you go away”, as well as “shut the f--k up” and “f--k off”.

The miserable sods should all hang their heads in shame.

You really have to wonder about their warped sense of perspective and the general emptiness in their lives at their going to the trouble of printing and laminating signs saying “No Fishing” at a pond off West Lakes Boulevard.

Perhaps they have environmental concerns. If they do, they have confused a reclaimed swamp that was turned into suburbia in the 1970s with the World Heritage-listed wetlands of Kakadu.

We adults can’t have it both ways.

We can’t complain about the youth of today lacking resilience, being obsessed with technology and sitting around eating junk and getting fat, while in the same breath telling them off for enjoying the outdoors.

Going fishing is the exact kind of thing which kids did all the time in the pre-TV, pre-internet era, back in the day when my old man was growing up with his excellent collection of Wonder Books and Boys Own Annual compendiums of activities for kids to do. I’ve got all of Dad’s Wonder Books and it’s a marvel reading about the unstructured and even risky behaviour that passed for entertainment in the 1950s. One of my favourites involves heading off into the woods on their own to make “nature rings”, where they draw a circle in the soil and then itemise all the different bugs they can find. These days the idea of letting your kids wander off anywhere, let alone to do a quick head count of potentially toxic insects, is enough to send any helicopter parent into a flat tail spin.

I note that one of the oldies at the centre of the Delfin Island video has said anonymously that she regrets her behaviour.

Well, good on her, but so she should. I am not sure what the rest of her gang think. They might be readying themselves for another busy afternoon laminating signs at the local Officeworks.

I have written before about how the chief victims of Nimbyism in this town are usually the young.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a hockey pitch in Netherby, expanded facilities for new girls’ AFLW teams at the Goody Saints, or the prospect of lights being installed at Glenelg Oval sparking documented fears among some locals that children would bang their hands on the advertising hoardings to celebrate goals. That fear prompted the serious suggestion from one resident that large black and gold cushions could be installed along the boundary fence to muffle the racket.

Or my personal favourite, the old hippy man at Aldinga Beach who wandered like the Sasquatch out of the scrub with a petition one day, asking if I’d sign to oppose plans for a footpath and bike path along the lower esplanade, which he warned would bring “countless children” into the area.

What the hell is wrong with these people? They have clearly forgotten what it was like to be a kid, to want to run around, exercise and play with friends, and heaven forbid even make a bit of noise.

At the same time we fret and moan about the youth of today, the fact that the devil can so easily find work for their idle hands to do, we are happy for our local council to go around erecting signs saying “No playing with basketballs after 6pm”.

Because, you know, setting aside Ukraine, Gaza and the existence of Donald Trump, the worst thing happening in the world right now is the sound of two kids shooting hoops after teatime.

I’m not much of a fisherman, and have always thought Samtass exists for the very convenient reason that you can always get high quality and reasonable seafood there without covering yourself in blood, guts and sunscreen.

But as a matter of principle in this case, I’m keen to head to Delfin Island in solidarity with these fine children to give fishing a go.

Let’s give the last word to the dad of one of the kids, Tony Garland, who had this to say: “These boys deserve praise for being out on their bikes, embracing the outdoors, and enjoying life rather than being cooped up inside with video games.”

Originally published as ‘Gangs’ of adults telling kids off for being kids are just as bad as the young | David Penberthy