The world's greatest pub crawl turned into the world's biggest collective hangover in Maryborough yesterday as up to 3000 party-goers recovered from about 50,000 drinks. The Sunday pub crawl was the city's second tilt at the Guinness World Record after successfully winning the inaugural title for its marathon drinking effort last year.But it was not just the hangovers that participants were reeling from yesterday. A swoop by the Queensland Licensing Commission fined eight of the 17 "crawl" pubs for allowing overflowing patrons to drink on the streets left a sour taste in many mouths. "This is an international event ... the beer festival in Germany would never have even begun with that sort of attitude," said one of organisers, Nancy Bates. "When you have a festival you expect some sort of leniency, not a deliberate attack ... they could have exercised some discretion."
World's Greatest Pub Crawl committee chairman and Maryborough councillor Anne Nioa said it had been a terrific event with an early count showing 2332 people had taken part. This was already well above the 1198 drinkers who secured the world record in last year's Queen's Birthday weekend attempt. "We sold about 3000 crawl cards and people still have 10 days to put them in for official counting," Cr Nioa said. "Everyone was really well behaved. There were some terrific costumes and it was a real carnival atmosphere ... although some people are probably a bit tired and emotional today."
Cr Nioa said the event attracted not just local people by the hundreds but also drinkers from interstate and even as far afield as Finland. Drinkers are required to visit 10 pubs in six hours and have at least one drink – alcoholic or not – to have their cards stamped to qualify. They began at noon with the firing of the heritage city's cannon and church bell ringing and finished up at 6pm. Cr Nioa said when all the cards were in they would be sent to the Guinness World Book of Records for verification. She said all 17 pubs in Maryborough, which cater for a population of 25,000, had taken part in the crawl.