A battered and bruised Australian Santa Claus has said he will no longer be coming to the boisterous outback town of Bourke after he was attacked by a group of children.
Santa and an assistant elf fled to the local police station for help and had to continue their mission handing out sweets from a police wagon with a police escort, Santa told reporters Tuesday."They were kicking me in the groin, pinching, punching in the kidneys and trying to grab the sweets and remove my disguise," the unfortunate Santa, local businessman John Holmes, said.
The attack on Holmes, who weighs in at 196 lbs., by 30 children age eight to 13, occurred after a carol-singing concert last week. "I wouldn't have liked to be out in the open for another five minutes," Holmes said.
It was the third time in three years that a Santa has come under attack in Bourke. In 1993, a different Santa was dragged from his boat on the Darling River and partly stripped.