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July 4, 2026 — 5:00am
Australia is responsible for some of the world’s dumbest ideas when it comes to the consumption of alcohol.
In honour of Dry July – and its annual campaign to support people dealing with cancer – here are just some of them.
The use of rum as a form of currency. I know coins were in short supply in the early days of the British colony, but was it really a good idea to use rum as a means of transacting business? For a start, how do you stop people drinking their change? There was also a problem for bartenders, as in the oft-heard conversation: “I’ll have a quart of rum, please.” “Sure, that will cost you a quart of rum.” No wonder the locals staged the Rum Rebellion, after which the colony shifted to a new system of exchange, based around cans of UDL pre-mix.
The shout. Fair enough, it’s a convivial idea when two friends are meeting for a drink. You buy the first round and then I’ll buy the second. It’s less helpful when it’s a group of 12. Either some people exit the “shout” halfway through, earning themselves a lifetime of opprobrium and social exclusion, or everyone sticks to the rules, leading to an appalling night of drunkenness and despair. Could we get rid of it or at least limit it to groups of three?
The wine cask. This is often listed as a great Australian invention, up there with Wi-Fi and the cochlear implant. I’m not so sure. The wine cask is a device designed to blur the line between the first bottle of wine and the second bottle of wine. Later in the night, it might serve to also blur the line between the second bottle and the third. At the very least there should be a see-through panel on the side, so you know how much of the stuff you’ve managed to put away.
The six o’clock swill. By forcing pubs to close at 6pm, authorities believed they could guarantee some level of sobriety among the working population. Most people didn’t finish work until 5pm, so how much could they possibly drink in just one hour? The answer, they discovered, was “a lot”. Pubs were full of men standing with legs apart, guarding the five or six beers they had lined up on the floor. Pubs installed tiled surfaces on both walls and floors, a design choice that reflected more than an interest in Edwardian ceramics. It became hard to tell the difference between the pub and the toilet out the back. A bit after 6pm, the pub would eject its patrons, many of whom would end up in the gutter outside. Overseas tourists, it was said, gathered to take photos. It was such a great idea they kept it going in NSW until 1955, in Victoria until 1966, and in South Australia until 1967.
How much could they possibly drink in just one hour? The answer, they discovered, was ‘a lot’.
Pubs open until 4am. If the six o’clock swill was a notoriously bad idea, so is its opposite. The suburbs are now full of pubs with neon signs saying “Open until 4am.” Publicans argue that this is to allow nighttime workers to have a drink after knock-off, just like everyone else. I’ve never been to a pub at 4am, but I find it unlikely that it’s full of nurses in scrubs having a calming sherry after a hard night in Emergency.
The Bona Fide Traveller. For decades, most Australian states had the “Bona Fide Traveller” rule. You could only buy a drink on a Sunday if you could prove you were a “bona fide traveller”, visiting from some distant town. The distance varied between the various states, but in NSW, right up to 1979, it was 30 miles (48 kilometres) – with the publican required to take a note of your “reasons for travel”. The result? People from, say, Tamworth, would drive up the hill to Armidale, get plastered all day, and then, in the late afternoon, drive shakily back down the hill to Tamworth. Along the way they’d pass all the people from Armidale who’d spent the day getting plastered in Tamworth, and were now weaving their way back up the hill. In other words, under this genius system, drink-driving was compulsory.
Pubs with no music. This is often due to noise restrictions, following complaints from neighbours. I understand their concern, but wonder about the justice of their cause. At what point did we allow people who’d moved next door to a pub – a pub built in 1863 – to express surprise after discovering there was a pub next door?
Grog in parliament. Australia’s parliaments combine a system of late-night sittings, together with well-stocked bars. What could go wrong? Next time you contemplate a piece of legislation which seems nonsensical or annoying, you may be comforted by the fact that it would have been voted into law by people unfit to operate heavy machinery.
So many ideas and so much idiocy. Have we come up with anything useful? Dry July might be our only good innovation. If, like me, you are attempting it, good luck.
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