The Boom Gate

Easter at Neds Corner has been a constant in my life for the past 40 years and for many of those years Andrew has been part of the madness.
Sophisticated practical jokes has always been part of what goes on at this venue.
Usually they take on a South Australia versus Victorian flavour and involve plenty of pre-planning on both sides. In Victoria we used to dress up in suits and all go to a particular pub for a planning night and im sure the south Aussies did something similar. Themes were developed and there was often a lot of hardware that needed to be transported to the sand bar. We were known to have built a floating casino, life guard tower and Mc Donalds restaurant complete with uniforms. South Aus once turned up with a 16 mm film projector to play the movie Airplane complete with a mock up plane to sit in complete with stolen life jackets under every seat..
With this background Andrew decided to take a non partisan view and went with his own project.
There is only one dirt track in to the sand bar and our greatest fear every year is that someone will beat us to our spot so we are always pretty anxious to get there before strangers arrive.
Margie and Michael had decided to go early this year to secure the site.
Without telling anyone he was coming, Andrew had decided to go up earlier than anyone else and had spent some time fabricating a beautifully engineered boom gate which then installed over the dirt road into the sand bar..... Then he waited.
Sure enough Michael and Margie arrived ready to secure the camp site only to be confronted by a closed official looking boom gate , hanging off the end of a substantial and well buried post.
Michael had never met Andrew before so when this large man sauntered up to the drivers window and casually said the the sandbar had been reserved for a private function this Easter and he couldn't pass. All hell broke loose . There was lots of "we've been coming here for 20 years" etc etc.
Michael finally backed the car up and went off road around the boom gate and roared off to the camp site. I'm not sure when Margie told him who Andrew really was. I just wished he'd filmed it.