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A Prankster Has Been Tricking Sydney Airport Passengers With A ‘Welcome To Perth’ Sign

A Prankster Has Been Tricking Sydney Airport Passengers With A ‘Welcome To Perth’ Sign

Let’s be honest, most pranks are truly awful – either in a lame or very mean way. Some genius in Sydney’s suburb of Sydenham, however, has managed to hit the absolute sweet spot of pranking.

In Sydney, it’s impossible to live or work along a flight path and not know about it. Hell, my old house practically used to rattle as they flew passed. So I can absolutely see how this prank by Brad Heasman came into being.

Speaking to Traveller, it turns out he’s been waiting a full three months for anyone to notice that he’d painted a “Welcome To Perth” sign on the roof of the building his company, Heasman Group, owns in Sydney’s Inner West.

“Our complex is directly under the flight path and we always see planes flying above so I thought ‘it’s a bit of a laugh, why not?'” he told Traveller. “I’ve just been waiting for other people to notice, I’m surprised it took this long actually”.

He went so far as to actually hire a local painting company to bring the prank to life, which seems to have finally paid off.

First appearing in Facebook group Frequent Flyers Australia, a photo of the sign made its way onto a Reddit thread.

Image: Reddit

The idea was admittedly not entirely original, as Heasmann explained that he took inspo from artist Mark Gubbins who has had “Welcome to Cleveland” painted on top of his house in Milwaukee since 1978 — a rick for passengers flying into Mitchell International Airport

“I just figured there was no reason I couldn’t do the same thing and it’d make people laugh,” continued Heasman. Fair point.

Social media is suitably impressed with the prank — just enough of a surprise to cause a small panic to passengers, but not enough to cause real damage. See? The sweet spot.

Hats off to you, Mr Heasman (and Mr Gubbins before him).


(Lead image: Reddit / @u/HiddenTaxes)

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