Citizen cop Joel Parkinson vindicated as Gold Coast council stops children mud-sliding down hills

"The hill is there for everybody, not just for a few kids — and adults — who want to mud slide down there." 

The Gold Coast City Council has won praise from residents and, one must presume citizen cop Joel Parkinson aka “Koolie Karen”, after it promised to end kids sliding down muddy hills following cyclonic rains by planting trees and installing sandstone seating.

It’s a logical step for Australians, brought up under the colonial whip of their British jailers and yet to escape the master-servant relationship with authorities, and who rarely miss a moment to report any breaking of rule.

You’ll remember two years ago when Parkinson was at the centre of a “wild Gold Coast pell-mell involving mud-sliding, tiktok, ageism and alleged hand-to-hand contact!”

Chas Smith reported,

Only those living under a rock will be unaware that, days ago, Parkinson approached a group of prepubescent twenty-five-year-olds enjoying a mud slide and told them to knock it off. They appeared to back-sass kicking off a wild pell-mell where it was alleged that the Billabong star knocked a camera into the muck. Then, yesterday, news footage came to light that appeared to color the 2012 Association of Professional Surfing tour winner in a hypocritical light as he, himself, had partaken in the mud sliding earlier.

Well, in the new angle, Parkinson’s frustration is on stark display, a raging bull snorting, pawing the ground, charging at various older youngsters. Was he angry that they were dropping into his secret spot? Frustrated by the clear lack of testosterone hanging in Coolangatta’s mist?

Five months ago, the Gold Coast teetered on a knife-edge after fears Parkinson would, again, be forced to use his powers of citizen policing after cyclonic rains from TC Alfred  turned the usually grassy hill at Kirra into a mudslide with dozens of thrillseekers braving the weather for the ride of a lifetime.

Now, thanks to complaints from residents, the squeal of delighted children sliding down muddy embankments will become a thing of the past after the GCCC revealed plans to stiff the kids, so to speak, with trees and seats.

Talking to the state-funded broadcaster ABC, councillor Gail O’Neill defended the decision.

“We have been putting up with this for years, but over the last couple of years we have got lots of complaints,” she said. “It takes a whole lot of money and a whole lot of time to restore. The hill is there for everybody, not just for a few kids — and adults — who want to mud slide down there.” 

Local rez Lorna Bartholomew, eighty-three, the sorta demographic y’think would be thrilled by the decision, said it was a little rough for the kids.

“They just love it, for those couple of days the kids have a lot of fun,” she said. “On the Gold Coast it’s not like they get snow to slide on, this is what they have instead.”