Melbourne has had its fair share of surprising events in recent years, but this prank might top them all. It’s 2024, and people will do anything for virality—proven by a young Melbourne Grammar student who poured milk boat passengers all for some recognition on TikTok.
Let’s take a deeper dive into these events so we can see what happened and the consequences of this young boy’s actions.
The whole debacle started when the owner of a boat hire company started to get some strange occurrences happening during his business hours. This happened when four women decided to hire an electric GoBoat along the Yarra River but during their journey miraculously experienced milk falling from the sky onto their boat, disrupting their party.
Since raining milk is pretty farfetched, further investigations had to be made. This meant that eventually Victoria Police were also contacted and this turned into a larger incident with the public being involved.
The police ended up issuing a public statement three days later that stated they were investigating how several people on a boat were sprayed with milk and they also put forward any witness to please speak up.
The milk came from a teenager who was a Year 11 at Melbourne Grammar School. This teenager was found to be posting the videos on TikTok. When the school was contacted they labelled the incident as unacceptable and made efforts to ensure that appropriate measures were taken by all parties.
The GoBoat owner reimbursed the group of women straight away and apologised, even though the incident wasn’t really his fault.
His boats often travel under prominent Melbourne bridges and this made him even more weary of things being thrown.
“Any object being thrown off a bridge to a recreational craft poses a risk”
His main point is that due to the power of social media, it’s likely that copycats would want to try the same or similar tricks to attract the same attention.
The reaction from the school, on the other hand, was much more serious. After the public backlash conspired with many on TikTok reporting the incident to the police and school, the perpetrator explained his situation on TikTok for those to see his side of the story.
He claimed his parents were being called by the Victoria Police and he was going to have a criminal record.
Eventually, Melbourne Grammar confirmed the incident and the fact that a year 11 student had been identified. As Melbourne Grammar costs up to $46,540, the school is quite prestigious, and does have a reputation to uphold.
The Principal Mr Grutzner issued a statement and responded that he is taking the incident seriously and currently investigating, as well as cooperating with any authorities. While external stakeholders may have not been seriously affected, the response to the incident does demonstrate that students need to be held accountable.
Mr Grutzner stated that he would work with the parents to handle the matter, which could mean punishment, reparations, apologies, and counselling.
While it has been said that the student will be punished appropriately, this hasn’t protected him from backlash online. A number of users on Reddit complained that the punishment wasn’t harsh enough. This was evident with the multitude of comments, including one that said “This P****s me off it wasn’t a ‘mistake’ it was a deliberate act by an idiot.” Others claimed they were shocked at how some don’t understand the difference between an accident and a mistake.
After the whole debacle, the victims are safe, and the student has been aware of the very real consequences of his actions.
