There's nothing new about any of this -- the wild party is firmly entrenched in youths' rites of passage in the movies and in high school lore across the land.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

The beach for most Australians is not just a place to cool off on a hot day, it is a place for the tentative dips of the toes in the shallows of early childhood and a place where teenage rites of passage played out.

BBC: Shore thing: Australia��s beach obsession

As at last the 20th century begins to turn, perhaps we shall see Asia mark these last rites of passage by ringing out the new, for a change, and ringing in the old.

CNN: Sign-off 1998

Foreign Secretary David Miliband told Adam Boulton on Sky there were only a few "rites of passage" needed before the Lisbon Treaty came into force and accused Mr Cameron of "dithering" because he did not "want to take on the euro extremists" in his party.

BBC: Tories 'to get Britain working'