The Wednesday Holiday

As I mentioned in my previous post, today is a public holiday in "the Brisbane area." I'm not really sure how far this extends from my present location, which is in my office at UQ, but I am guessing that no more than 2 million people are affected. The purpose of this Wednesday holiday is supposedly to give local residents a chance to attend the Ekka, the big annual exhibition that runs for 10 days total. A relatively small proportion of the 2 million people who have this day off will actually attend Ekka today (I think the normal Ekka day attendance is in the tens of thousands), so I just don't get the logic of this Wednesday holiday. Why did they choose Wednesday in the first place, and why wasn't it Friday instead? If the concern is that giving a 3-day weekend to local residents would make it more likely that some of them would leave the area instead of going to Ekka, would it really end up being much lower than the figures for today's attendance? Certainly the costs to local businesses in giving everyone this day off, coupled with the loss of sales to those who are outside "the Brisbane area," far exceed the extra revenue generated by those who attend Ekka today anyway. Oh well. At least it gives me some extra time to catch up with my work. I wish I had a Wednesday public holiday every week.