Maryborough aims to regain pub-crawl world record

Melbourne, Jun 3 (ANI): Maryborough, a small town in Queensland, is out to regain its title for staging the world's biggest pub-crawl.

The town has already defeated London, Halifax and Ottawa, but they now need to defeat New York City to reclaim the title.

Maryborough had been the original holder of the Guinness World Record in 2005, before the honour was taken away by a 2006 London pub crawl, but regained it back again with 2758 people in 2007.

The relatively tiny population of 26,000 in the south Queensland city has managed to lift the bar, involving just over 3000 drinkers in 2008.

But it has now met its match after New York City (population - eight million) topped with 107 people in March, raising the bar to 3163 people.

Lining up its fifth assault on the world mark, Maryborough marketing, tourism and events councillor Anne Nioa says it's going to be David versus Goliath.

"We once again have Aussie pride on the line. We've beaten the Brits and Canadians and now we'll show the Yanks how it is done as well," News.com.au quoted her as saying.

She expects as many as 5000 tickets to be sold for the crawl, with all participants being encouraged to wear pink to raise money for the McGrath Foundation.

For the record to count, people must buy a drink (not necessarily alcoholic) in at least 10 of 13 participating pubs and remember to hand in proof of purchase cards by the end of the day.

Easier said than done when a large portion of the crowd is verging on inebriation.

"Another problem we've had in previous years is that the participants want to keep their card as a souvenir for the day. Which we obviously encourage them not to do," Nioa said.he said the annual event had turned into a big town reunion, with many university students returning home to visit family and "celebrate" with mates.

The crawl will kick off on June 7 at 11am with a blast of the city's historic time cannon at the Maryborough Town Crier. (ANI)