Here's What 5,000 Australians Battling Each Other With 300,000 Tomatoes Looks Like

You say toh-may-toh, Australians say, "Incoming!"

Some 5,000 Aussies gathered at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne last Saturday to hurl around 300,000 tomatoes at each other for an event called -- what else? -- "Tomato Battle." According to The Herald Sun, the event was created as a nod to "La Tomatina," a similarly sticky festival held in Spain each year.

Festival organizers told Mashable Australia that attendees were required to wear safety goggles and bathing suits. Even so, two tomato warriors were reportedly hospitalized; the nature of their injuries wasn't immediately clear.

The organizers hastened to add that all tomatoes used in the fight had "been previously marked for disposal," meaning participants threw food waste, as opposed to simply just wasting food.

"All the tomatoes used in our battles are past ripe (rotten) and are not fit for human consumption," organizers noted in a Facebook post for the 2013 battle. "These are tomatoes that food banks can't even give to the needy and were to be disposed of."

Check out images from the 2015 Tomato Battle below: