2023-11-10 08:16:00
Reality is an illusion created only by the absence of alcohol, says an Australian proverb. I’m sitting at the counter of the Daly Waters Pub, a well-known pub on the Stuart Highway between Katherine and Tennant Creek. Based on the conversations, my drinking neighbors here have pretty clear ideas about what makes life more Australian, i.e. more livable.
“Buy me a drink and I will tell you a story,” suddenly says a man with a red beard next to me. In addition to this probably Irish-inspired twist on a lovely old form of trading, there are plenty of other clever ideas for getting a free drink in Australian pubs.
For example, if you see a wooden sign with the abbreviation WYBMADIITY hanging over the counter, you should restrain your curiosity as much as possible. Because if you want to know what the abbreviation means, you will quickly come across a friendly Aussie who can earn your beer in no time with just one clever question: “Will you buy me a drink if I tell you?”
Pubs offer gas stations and strip poker
The „Daly Waters Pub“, born in 1930, has really gone all out and is doing a lot to attract tourists, truck drivers and bikers from the nearby Stuart Highway. You can see car license plates from all over the world on a corrugated iron fence. Then there is the obligatory Thong Tree, a tree covered in flip-flops.
Inside I would find the hats for the twins, an Australian with Turkish roots tells me. When he sees my puzzled face, he leads me in the pub to a veritable curtain of bras in all sizes and colors hanging from the ceiling. Push-ups, lingerie bras, sports bras, including many older models are included. The oversizes have been cleverly draped on the outside. Very impressive. One wall of the pub, which is called the drovers’ bank, is wallpapered with colorful banknotes from all over the world.
Far outside the cities, pubs are almost always gas stations at the same time – this also applies to the “Daly Waters Pub”
Quelle: Getty Images/Peter Bischoff
As befits a real outback pub, cars can also quench their thirst here. Far outside the cities, pubs are almost always gas stations, mini shops and restaurants. Some even employ traveling hairdressers, but everyone tries to impress visitors with crazy things. Some hang bottles in the trees outside, others offer strip poker or place snakes soaked in alcohol in glass containers on the piano.
Local with an airstrip for airplanes
There are pubs where crazy sporting competitions take place, like the goanna pulling that I once experienced in Kalgoorlie. Two men get into the lizard position, i.e. the goanna position, a twisted version of the quadruped position. They wear a durable leather strap around their neck and use it – face to face – to pull the opponent over a white line in ground combat. If you want, you can watch it on YouTube.
Other pubs have their own little theme park, have a white cockatoo or a private zoo where kangaroos and camels get bored. Others engage in a macabre pub sport in which differently marked cane toads are placed in a circle. Cane Toad Racing is the name of this competition, in which the owner of the fastest toad, i.e. the one who leaves the circle first, wins.
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And then there are the pubs that are so far removed from civilization that you find their own dusty airplane runway right next to the pub. “I’m just going to drop by John’s for a beer, darling.”
Pubs are still an important part of Australian social life and beer is still cult, although in some areas it is increasingly being overtaken by wine. Pub is short for public house, and in Australia they actually still are: places for the whole family. Often with their own playroom for the kids, slot machines for teenagers and BBQ grills in the courtyard. The ATMs, which are no longer one-armed, jingle in the adjoining rooms.
In Australia, pubs are places for the whole family – children are welcome here
Quelle: The Washington Post via Getty Images/The Washington Post
Women find cozy TV and lounge corners, men have their counters and flat screens on which the sports programs run in endless mode. Pubs in the dusty outback are often referred to as watering holes. Some pubs look like palaces, the famous one „York Hotel“ in Kalgoorlie, for example, others are nothing more than shabby little dive bars.
In Australia, cooling plays a big role
Every year the UN determines the well-being index for the countries of the world. Australia is always at the forefront. When you analyze what makes people down under so happy, simple truths emerge. The good life in countries with extreme heat depends on the reliability of cooling and ventilation systems. A properly functioning air conditioner is the be-all and end-all of every Australian household.
Some pubs look like palaces – such as the famous York Hotel in Kalgoorlie
Source: picture alliance/Hinrich Bäsemann
In the center of Alice Springs you can see an extremely clever way of cooling in a hospital right next to the small church in the pedestrian zone: a hundred years ago, the rooms were heated with wet linen sheets and a sophisticated system of ventilation shafts.
Ultimately, Australians’ satisfaction increases in a clearly defined relationship to the availability of a cold beer. For this reason, Australian inventors dealt early and extensively with the horrors of ice and the darkness of the freezer compartments and made what is probably the country’s most important invention – the freezer.
In the huge ice cream compartments of supermarkets today you can find whole truckloads full of huge ice cream packs. They are particularly popular when deep sea fishing to keep the fish fresh. But people also bring huge blocks of ice to the garden party to keep the beer and cider in the small pool in the garden cold.
The Esky, the portable cooler, is ubiquitous in Australia
Quelle: Getty Images/Brett Hemmings
The freezer’s little sister is the Esky, one of the most recognizable symbols of everyday Australian life. The Esky, the portable cooler, is a marvel of refrigeration technology and was originally invented to keep food and drinks cool. However, most Australians see the most important function of an Esky as solely transporting beer.
Aborigines were paid with alcohol or tobacco
When it comes to transport, Australians have always been inventive when it comes to preventing glass breakage, refrigeration and providing sufficient fluids. Box wine and bag-in-box are also Australian inventions. And even if you, as a die-hard wine connoisseur, are reluctant to drink from a box and would only like to think that this booze is of inferior quality, the box is definitely practical and is often used at Australian picnics.
Such boxes may seem strange to wine lovers, but the boxes are practical
Quelle: picture alliance/Zoonar/Bernd Juergens
When Australia was just being settled by hard-drinking Brits and Irish and beer was still considered currency, there were many unlicensed bars, so-called shanties, where you could bust your head or squander your monthly salary, in between drinking a nasty brew of rum, opium and… Vitriol clouded the brain. Times were hard back then and throats were bone dry. Historians claim the amount of alcohol consumed by the first European settlers in Australia was higher than that of any other human group that has ever lived on the planet.
At that time, the country’s pubs mostly also functioned as gambling dens and betting shops. A circumstance that has not changed significantly to this day. While many workers in the early 18th century were paid with gold and Holey dollars, the Aborigines received alcohol or tobacco as their only wages. Yes, they made fun of filling the Indigenous people with alcohol and letting them fight each other.
Beer is still cult, even if wine is increasingly taking over from wine in some areas
Quelle: Getty Images/Grant Faint
The famous Australian tradition of shouting, the custom of throwing laps for your buddies, also has its origins in the early gold rush era. When someone found a nugget, they ran into the bar and loudly threw a round for the whole place. The shout is still part of the standard repertoire of every bar enthusiast.
Beer was considered a unit of measurement for space and time
When the first pubs opened in Australia, the brewery whose beer you drank down your throat had to be within sight of the pub, otherwise you wouldn’t trust the ingredients. For this reason, at the time of the founding, almost every pub had its own brewery and proudly called itself a hotel. A term that is still used today for Australian pubs and comes from a time when innkeepers had to provide at least one room for drunken guests.
Until two decades ago, beer had a fairly high status in Australia. Beer was not just a drink and a means of payment, but was also considered a unit of measurement for space and time. Until the turn of the millennium, distances between two cities were still given in beer. “Sorry, how long does it take from Darwin to Katherine?” “Oh, no more than a six-pack.”
More tips for vacation in Australia:
And of course the time needed for certain work and friendship services was also stated in the billing unit beer: “Hello, Paul. How much longer do you need to tile the bathroom?” “Oh, probably another carton.” (This means a carton of beer.)
Australia is probably the only country with a prime minister who is in the Guinness Book of World Records for his drinking habits. In 1963, Bob Hawke managed to “drink” 1.4 liters of beer in eleven seconds. In his memoirs, he writes that this record promoted his political career more than anything else in his life.
The text is a slightly abridged excerpt from the recently published book “Instructions for Australia” by Joscha Remus, Piper Verlag, 224 pages, 16 euros.
Source: Piper Publishing
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