Category / Alcohol

by Eddie

I’ll be in the biergarten if you need me

So I was listening to 6PR this morning. (Don’t judge. They had me on the other day to talk about what a brilliant historian I am, so some quality listening time was owing.)

Anyway, speaking this morning was some head honcho of whatever company now owns the Raffles. He was claiming that it had the first beer garden in Australia.

Whenever anyone claims that they have the ‘first’ something, my historian spider-sense tingles and tells me that it almost certainly marketing BS.

And I was right. However, in this case it was 1937 marketing BS, to promote the Hotel Raffles’ new biergarten. But it was a lie then, and it remains a lie now. Even the Style Council’s heritage assessment of the Raffles only makes that claim it was the first beer garden in Perth.

And, for once, the Style Council is right. The first beer garden in WA, and perhaps Australia, was in Wiluna, in the attractive Weeloona Hotel pictured above, as well as another pub in the town, the Commercial Hotel. Both predate the one at Canning Bridge by a couple of years.

The two pubs had their grounds grassed, and planted creepers, shrubs and flowers. Both allowed an area for an orchestra to perform.

But who would be able to resist the Weeloona’s star attraction? A kurrajong tree transported more than 50km to its new garden home.

Bottoms up everyone!

by Eddie

A dangerous habit

Bronx_(cocktail)

In 1938, a savage drug was menacing Perth. The side effects were terrifying:

Within a minute or two after taking on an empty stomach, sensations of the most pronounced kind occurred. The partaker became exhilarated, light-headed, bright and talkative, their face was flushed, their pupils dilated, heart and respiration both quickened.

Under the influence, you would become giddy and ungainly with wild involuntary movements. Finally, the drug could so excite the central nervous system it would produce epileptic convulsions.

With dangers like that, it was difficult to understand why Perth’s fashionable set kept drinking cocktails.

Yes, that’s right. The scourge sweeping Western Australia in 1938 was a cocktail on a weekday after work.

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by Eddie

Free and easy on the buses

So, taxi drivers are complaining about Uber. A century ago, they were complaining about these new-fangled motor buses. Nothing ever changes, does it?

On the first Saturday that a motor bus tried to take passengers to the races from the rank in St. George’s Terrace there was almost a riot. Angry cab drivers gathered round and shouted threats and curses. Anybody who attempted to enter the bus was vigorously hooted. Nevertheless the bus got a load and made a successful trip to the races and back.

On the Belmont run, ‘when knighthood was in flower,’ it was the custom when the bus was overcrowded for a lady to rise and let a gentleman occupy her seat; she would then sit on his knee. Free and easy were the conditions of those days.

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by Eddie

The racecourse whisky scandal

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A little too much racecourse whiskey perhaps?

Apparently today is something called the Melbourne Cup. Unlike those lazy Victorians, we in the Dodgy Perth office are expected to work all day. Anyway, because we will be sneaking off to the Civic Hotel for a lunchtime flutter and drink, we present the local scandal of ‘racecourse whisky’.

Racecourse Whisky was not a nobbled horse. Nor even a nickname for the lovely lady pictured above. Instead, it was low-grade, adulterated liquor sold to the general admission patrons at Ascot.

Half a public health concern, it was also half a joke. People charged with being drunk and disorderly would sometimes claim, “It wasn’t me, your Honour, it was the racecourse whisky.”

There were regular debates about who should run Ascot’s bars, professional publicans or the Western Australian Turf Club. But very little was done to improve the standards of the alcohol served at the course.

For all those who overindulge today, listen to plea from a Belmont racegoer a century ago:

To the Editor

Sir, May I ask a little space in your paper to protest against the class of liquor dispensed to patrons on our leading course at Ascot?

It is scandalous the class of drink served out to customers there. I think the caterer must make it his business to secure all the oldest and unsaleable stock he can manage to get hold of.

Where are the inspectors? I remember once seeing an inspector make the caterer remove a dozen or more bottles from the shelves as unfit to be sold to the public. Still even then I do not think there was a prosecution.

I think it only a fair thing to patrons of the leger that they be protected by the clubs which they patronise. Clubs should see that only the best liquors are on sale and do away with what is now termed ‘racecourse whisky.’

Yours, etc.,
C. D. Lester, 861 Murray Street, Perth, Nov. 16

by Eddie

The war on the home front

What is there wicked about a glass of good beer?

Today is the centenary of the AIF’s departure from Albany.

Strangely, for all the media coverage, and expense, it is not often mentioned that this party has little to do with West Australians. Our boys departed through Fremantle, not Albany, and there seems little money to be spent on recognising WA’s role in WWI.

So we thought that Dodgy Perth should get in on the heritage juggernaut and offer up our own slant on the Great War.

West Australians were trained at Blackboy Hill, located a couple of kilometres east of Midland town centre.

The canteen was provided by the YMCA. This proved controversial, with the YMCA accused of operating the mess as a profit-making concern, overpaying its manager, charging rent to the canteen for use of a government erected building, and generally ripping off the enlisted men.

So, on Monday 28 September 1914, the officers opened a ‘wet’ canteen in a tent at Blackboy Hill. They believed that this would be good for morale, keep the men away from the local pubs and at camp, and limit alcohol consumption to beer rather than spirits.

All in all, you would think, an improvement to the training camp to which no one in their right mind could object. However, this was Western Australia.

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