Australia is home to many pubs (public houses), also called hotels, which are establishments licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. They may also provide other services, such as entertainment, meals and basic accommodation.
History
Origin Pubs in Australia are descendants of the British and Irish pub. The production and consumption of alcoholic drinks has long played a key role in Western commerce and social activity. The importance of pubs is highlighted by the British colonisation of Australia after 1788. However, in the 19th century, the local version improved a number of distinctive features that set it apart from the classic British or urban Irish pub.
In many cases, pubs were the first structures built in newly colonised areas, especially on the goldfields, and new towns often grew up around them. Pubs typically served multiple functions, simultaneously serving as hostelry, post office, restaurant, meeting place and sometimes even general store.
19th-century development
Pubs proliferated during the 19th century, especially during the gold rush that began in the 1850s, and many fine examples were built in the state capitals and major regional cities and towns. Some of the best colonial-era pubs in Australia's major cities have fallen victim to urban re-development, which has destroyed a significant portion of Australia's 19th-century architectural heritage. State capitals like Melbourne and Adelaide, and large regional cities and towns such as Kalgoorlie in Western Australia still boast some examples, and many other 19th-century pubs survive in country towns.
Among the colonial-era hotels, now lost to development, were the Bellevue Hotel in Brisbane (demolished in 1979) and two of Sydney's pub-hotels – the Hotel Australia, which formerly stood on the corner of Castlereagh St and Martin Place (demolished c. 1970 to make way for the MLC Centre) and the Tattersall's Hotel in Pitt St. Its marble bar was dismantled and reinstalled in a basement under the Sydney Hilton Hotel, which was built on the site of the Tattersall's Hotel in the early 1970s.
The development that solidified the characteristic style of the modern Australian pub was the introduction of the American-style bar counter in the early nineteenth century. Customers began to sit apart from the publicans, the atmosphere became commercial rather than home-like and the pub became a distinctly public, Australian male-dominated establishment.
Beer drinking culture in Australia Australia's beer-drinking culture is descended from the northern European tradition, which favoured grain-derived beverages like beer and spirits, whereas in southern European countries like Italy and Greece wine was the drink of choice. Beer was for many years the largest-selling form of alcoholic drink in Australia, and Australia has long had one of the highest per capita rates of beer consumption in the world.
Australia did not develop a significant wine-making industry until the 20th century and while the wine industry grew steadily, wine did not become a major consumer drink until the late 20th century. Therefore, for the period between 1800 and 1950, alcohol production and consumption in Australia was dominated by beer and spirits, with Australian pubs becoming synonymous with ice-cold pilsener beer.
Effect of licensing laws Liquor licensing policies in early colonial Australia were relatively liberal, but in the late 19th century there was growing pressure from conservative Christian groups, known as the Temperance Leagues, to restrict the sale of alcohol. In 1916 after drunken soldiers rioted in Sydney new licensing laws restricted alcohol in all Australian states, in most cases banning sales after 6 pm. The new legislation also forced publicans seeking a spirits licence to also obtain a beer licence and to provide accommodation.
The licensing laws restricted the sale and service of alcohol almost exclusively to pubs for decades. Alcohol could usually be purchased only in pubs, and many states placed restrictions on the number of bottles per customer that could be sold over the counter. It was not until the late 20th century that "bottle-shops" and chain-store outlets (where liquor was sold but not served) became common and restaurants and cafes were more widely licensed to serve liquor or to allow customers to "bring their own".
Opening hours were generally heavily restricted, and pubs were usually open only from 10 am to 6 pm, Monday to Saturday. Some pubs were granted special licences to open and close earlier – e.g. opening at 6 am and closing at 3 pm – in areas where there were large numbers of people working night shifts. Pubs were invariably closed on Sundays, until the various state Sunday Observance Acts were repealed during the 1950s and early 1960s.
These restrictions created a small but lucrative black market in illegal alcohol, leading to the proliferation of illegal alcohol outlets in many urban areas; the so-called "sly grog shop". After the Federation of Australia in 1901, Australia's new constitution ruled that the Commonwealth of Australia had no power to legislate in this area, so each state enacted and enforced its own liquor licensing regulations. This meant the Prohibition lobby in Australia had to lobby each individual state government, and was unable to achieve any nationwide ban on the sale of alcohol. Although liquor sales remained heavily restricted for many years, Australia did not experience the many social ills, including the vast expansion of organised crime that resulted from Prohibition in the United States in the 1920s.
Pubs and licensing laws Each Australian state has its own set of liquor licensing laws which regulate the times that pubs could open and close. Until recently these laws were relatively strict.
The six o'clock swill
From the advent of the eight-hour day until the late 1970s, most Australian blue-collar workers were tied to a 9am-5pm, Monday-to-Friday work schedule. Because most pubs were only permitted to stay open until 6 pm, workers would commonly head for the nearest pub as soon as they finished work at 5 pm, where they would drink as much as possible, as quickly as possible, in the hour before the pub closed. This practice came to be known as the "six o'clock swill".
It fostered an endemic culture of daily binge drinking, which in turn created persistent problems of alcohol-related violence – drunken patrons regularly got into alcohol-fuelled fights in and around the pub, and many husbands arrived home in the early evening extremely drunk, with negative consequences. This destructive 'tradition' persisted through most of the 20th century but it quickly disappeared after the 1960s, when changes to the licensing laws in most states allowed pubs to stay open until 10 pm.
Another factor that reinforced the nexus between pubs and problem drinking was that, until the late 20th century in most parts of Australia, alcohol could usually only be purchased over the counter at the pub, and the types and amount of alcohol that could be sold was also restricted.
The bottle shop The pub-based bottle shop "bottle-o", usually one of the smaller bars converted into a sales area for bottled and canned drinks, is now commonplace in Australian pubs, but these only began to appear in the 1960s. These were followed by specialist "sales-only" retail outlet chains where alcohol is not served on the premises.
Legal restrictions vary by state, but generally continue to mandate that alcohol be sold in a "separately defined area" (NSW), and while some smaller retailers like Aldi sell alcohol in the same store, Coles and Woolworths supermarkets do not. Specialist liquor stores account for most of the alcohol sold in Australia.
In most large cities and towns there were also a number of designated "early openers", pubs that were specially licensed to open in the early morning and close mid-afternoon. These early openers primarily catered for shift workers who had just finished a 9pm-6am night shift.
Violence and crime
These regulations and conventions created a climate in which many pubs – especially those located near dockyards and other industrial sites – gained a reputation for being violent, dangerous and generally unsavoury places. Australians were among the highest per capita alcohol consumers in the world, and the combination of large amounts of alcohol, an all-male clientele and aggravating factors like the "six o'clock swill" (see above) regularly led to violent clashes between inebriated patrons.
The relationship between pubs and crime in Australia was established early, and some inner-city and suburban pubs were frequented by criminals, who met there to recruit accomplices and plan "jobs". Criminals also regularly used particular pubs as "shop fronts" from which to sell the proceeds of their crimes on the black market. Late in the twentieth century, this tradition came to include drug dealing, and every major Australian city has pubs which became notorious from the 1970s as virtual "supermarkets" for many types of drug.
Gambling Gaming and betting is another major part of Australian pub culture. Legal gambling is a relatively new phenomenon in Australia, but illegal gaming has always been part of pub culture. Because legal betting on horse and dog races was for many years restricted to racetracks, and no off-track betting was permitted, illegal betting (usually known as "starting price" or SP bookmaking) proliferated. Pubs became a major venue for the collection of bets and the distribution of winnings. One Australian author has noted that SP bookmaking had become so widespread by the early 20th century that constituted "a virtual national act of civil disobedience".
One of the betting games most closely associated with the Aussie pub was the coin game two-up, which was extremely popular during the 19th and earlier 20th century. It is most often associated with the celebration of Anzac Day on 25 April each year. In the years after World War I, it became traditional that, after the early morning commemorative service and march, ex-servicemen would gather at local pubs to drink, reminisce and play two-up. Although still technically illegal, Anzac Day two-up games are now openly played in streets and laneways outside pubs and it has become a national institution that is now generally ignored by police.
Slot machines, known locally as "pokies", remain an important source of custom and revenue, although restrictive state-level licensing means that only a minority of pubs can operate them. In 2002, over half of the $4 billion in gambling revenue collected by state governments came from pubs and clubs.
Live music and the pub circuit
In the 1970s and 1980s, pubs played an important role as venues for live rock music in Australia.
Reflecting the age of its fans, in the preceding decades, pop and rock music performances were typically "all ages" events. Smaller concerts were often held in public venues like community, church, school or local council halls, and larger performances (like tours by visiting international acts) were staged in major concert halls or sports stadiums. Some concerts were staged in licensed premises, but the vast majority were in public venues open to all ages, and alcohol was unavailable.
By the late 1960s, Australia's "baby boomer" pop audience was ageing into its late teens and early twenties. This demographic trend coincided with the gradual relaxation of states' restrictive licensing laws – the legal drinking age was generally lowered to 18 (in line with changes to the voting age) and the opening hours of pubs were finally allowed to be extended to 10pm.