By the time I reached legal drinking age the six o’clock swill was just a memory, but ten o’clock closing and no Sunday trading were facts of life. So it is that my strongest memory of late teens and early twenties pub life is of the post nine pm Saturday night panic, to stock up for the dry day coming. The time, and bottle shop conditions, were constantly monitored by us on this night when it was vital to have something to do and fuel with which to do it. From nine o’clock on Bottle Shops, part of the pub, there were no independents back then, were the most popular and crowded parts of any pub and pity help those who arrived a 9:50 on a bumper evening to find the sort of crowd that these days you might expect to see for the release of the latest X-Box, though not as orderly.
It’s Saturday night for god’s sake and at Nine PM, instead of setting out for the night as our European cousins might, we were panicking as our core social center, the only one with a government license to purvey fermented liquor, is one hour away from closing. Not just for the night but for the next 36 hours. By the time it re opens the weekend will be over and you will be dragging your sorry ass back to work for another grinding week. Is it any wonder that under such conditions people got confused about their requirements and over compensated, not unlike people threatened by war-time-rationing. “A slab of VB tinnies please” (they were actually steel cans, far more deserving of this title than their aluminum descendants) “No hold on Andy is down this weekend make it two” Hmm, last time he was down his cousin was to, man she’s hot. “Give us a bottle of Vodka too, and I better have a bottle of that Riesling stuff” This was a rationale played out much more often than I’m ever going to be able to convince you.
That it happened is our disgrace, mine, the AHA’s and the NSW Governments. Once all this alcohol was purchased what do you think happened. There’s a point at which drinking becomes irrational. Even if Andy and his hot cousin didn’t show this alcohol needed drinking. Yes we went on to drink at least three times what we would have, had we known as our European and Asian cousins did, that if we wanted it a drink was always available, often from the local grocer. I’m not sure that there weren’t other parts of the world were conditions were as bad as this but I am sure that if there were, then culturally they should have been described, as I would describe us, as Barbarians.
Innocent as I then was I took my publican at his word when he said “sorry mate, it’s the law” little realizing that it was his law. It’s fascinating to reflect that in those days (and little has changed) publicans thrived with little in way of marketing, supported instead by their governments restrictions which made pub attendance a right of passage that guaranteed an ever growing market. What can you do when you turn 18? Go to the pub. What a fabulous marketing ploy and it costs peanuts. I thought my publican wanted longer trading hours in which to do business from which he would obviously profit. Not till much later, did I realize that he was very happy with the status quo. He sold two to three times as much product as he would have staying open without having to pay all those extra wages. A win win situation that left him with plenty of time to stand upright in church on Sunday proud of his handsome contribution to the plate.
Nowadays I, and the public at large, bare up under the tyranny of the descendants of these licensed purveyors who having been dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty first century, where to compete with licensed clubs their friends in government have granted them licenses for poker machines and Totalizer agencies that have turned them into gambling factories where we can relieve ourselves from the pointlessness of work that demands a ludicrously unreal commitment to corporate greed. Throwing our money into ever increasing slots while throwing ever increasing varieties of alcohol down our throats, in order to reach a charged oblivion that often ends in violence and glassing.
It’s in this environment that John Thorpe the current chief of the AHA stands up to warn us that new legislation to license small bars will see the city awash in alcohol. That’s flawless; and why not. His organization has been practicing this hypocrisy for decades.
The second phase of my education in the in the purveying of alcohol began when in the early seventies I set out to travel in the world at large. A quest at which I failed though having set such a large goal I did manage to spend a number of years in Asia or more specifically Indonesia, Singapore, Malaya, Thailand, Laos, Hong Kong and Japan. Traveling then, with my particular acquired disposition to Alcohol and its consumption, I paid close attention to the social and political mores of its dispensation and effects.
These of course were many and varied. Indonesia and Malaya, both predominately Muslim saw the vast population abstinent but alcohol was, particularly where foreign tourists were likely to be, readily available, a mere commodity like soap or jam or anything that might sell, not restricted to any special licensing. In Singapore and Thailand there was little more discrimination against alcohol consumption than one would find in Australia, that’s to say not much. Availability was again across the board from supermarkets to restaurants, grocery stores to road side stalls. Anywhere in fact that someone might chance to want to buy it. In Hong Kong where I might have expected the then British rule to have imposed restrictions not unlike our own, I once more found liquor available anywhere it might be in demand. It was here, where I spent some time, that I was to come to love the liberty of sitting dockside in the hot evening, when the commerce of the day had left it free, at hastily spread tables, drinking beer eating Rambutans, Satays, Lichees, Noodles and all manner of curbside prepared delicacies amidst crowds of happy punters and wonder why I could not do this at home. Even on the small island Cueung Chow where I rented a flat, with a population of twenty thousand people and no motorized transport, I was able to buy a beer from a dockside grocery and drink at the table they would conveniently erect for me as I awaited incoming friends on the ferry from Hong Kong. On some evenings long socials with beer and Backgammon would last well into the early morning hours.
In none of these countries did I ever witness the cultural drunkenness and violence which had been so obvious back home in Australia. Rather there, where by John Thorpe’s standards, he would have had to say that the cities were awash in alcohol, I never saw a punch let alone a glassing. In fact I saw very little drunkenness of the falling down kind at all.
Japan or Tokyo where I was also to spend some time was another story, not just in regard to alcohol consumption but on every plane as I’m sure anyone who has been there will agree. Now there may have been some licensing laws I don’t know, there were so many things going on I didn’t understand. However I or anyone else was able to get a shot of scotch or sake from a not vandalized vending machine 24/7, and it was not uncommon to see a Japanese gentleman having a relationship with one in the early hours of the morning. In those days expense accounts were a large portion of co-operate salaries ensuring the money went round. From my position as barman at a small club I was able to observe their strange customs. It was not in the least uncommon for a group of seven to seventeen (they did nothing in groups of less than seven) to turn up and, after a round of drinks for themselves and as many hostesses were appropriate and available, to order another round upon receipt of which and without drinking them, rise, bid polite farewells and leave. All drinks were frightfully expensive and were put on what we call a tab to be paid on departure. Here again I never witnessed violence, drunkenness yes, in their strange structured parameters of exclusively male culture, violence, never.
I accept that there will always be cultural differences to how different communities approach alcohol consumption but It’s well known by me, government and the AHA that government prohibition as in restrictive licensing of markets and age limits on consumption only serve to encourage abuse of alcohol. Any statement contrary to this such as those of John Thorpe can only be regarded as those of the hopelessly politically compromised and should be ignored.
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