To legally buy alcohol from this Queensland pub you must blow in the bag – and you must blow zero.
Key points:
Queensland government measures prohibited all alcohol in Kowanyama since 2008
In 2014 the community’s canteen reopened, serving restricted amounts of alcohol
Takeaway sales are now allowed in the community, with each person allowed 12 mid-strength drinks per evening, four nights a week
Kowanyama, a remote town on western Cape York, was one of seven Indigenous communities in Queensland where prohibition was introduced in 2008.
In 2014, the local canteen reopened serving restricted amounts of alcohol.
This year the community has gained more freedom regarding alcohol, successfully applying for a takeaway license.
But that freedom is restricted.
Each person is limited to buying 12 mid-strength drinks per evening, and only from Wednesday to Saturday between 5pm and 11pm.
To enter the canteen patrons you must sign in, take a breathalyser test, and return a zero blood alcohol reading—even to buy takeaways.
Some Kowanyama residents register their homes as ‘dry places’, with penalties for anyone who brings alcohol in.(ABC Far North: Mark Rigby )
They can then, for example, have four drinks at the bar and take eight home.
Producing a members or visitors card at the bar allows staff to keep tabs on how many drinks people have had, while customers are kept informed of their limit by a flashing digital display on the cash register.
A similar canteen has this month opened on the opposite side of Cape York, at Lockhart River — another of the seven communities where prohibition was introduced in 2008.
Venues on Mornington Island and at Pormpuraaw, on western Cape York, are also in the process of applying for extensions of their existing liquor licences.
‘Hardly anyone here’
Many in Kowanyama gathered for the annual Rodeo Ball this month, hosted at the canteen.
Thomas Hudson, President of the Kowanyama Sport and Recreation Association which runs the canteen, said the aim of the ball was to bring the community together.
Kowanyama Sport and Recreation Association president Thomas Hudson spearheads the annual Rodeo Ball.(ABC Far North: Mark Rigby)
“For people to dress up and be proud of themselves because we don’t do that every day here in our community,” Mr Hudson said.
Attendance at this year’s event, the first since its inception where takeaway alcohol has been available, was down on previous years.
The steady stream of people buying from the canteen takeaway counter before its 8pm closure confirmed what ball attendee Clive ‘Smokey’ Gilbert suspected – that many were choosing to drink at home.
“There’s hardly anyone in the canteen here,” Smokey said.
“When no takeaways were on this pub used to be crowded but you don’t see that now, they’re always going home now.”
Clive ‘Smokey’ Gilbert (L) and Kowanyama Aboriginal Shire Mayor Robbie Sands (R) attended this year’s Rodeo Ball.(ABC Far North: Mark Rigby)
Fellow Kowanyama resident Gwendolyn Dick said despite the below average attendance, the ball did succeed in bringing the community together during an extended period of sorry business.
“We had four deaths just recently, and another one in the last week or so,” Ms Dick said.
“It’s good to see all the families from in the community come together all in one because we often can’t during the sorry business and the funeral.”
Return of rights and responsibilities
Most in Kowanyama welcome the return of the canteen and of takeaway alcohol sales, including the community’s women’s support group.
Security providers and canteen customers said the increase in takeaway sales had resulted in a reduction in fights and anti-social behavior at the pub.
“It’s something good for the community,” Smokey said.
“It keeps them out of trouble and people enjoy their beers at home watching the football.”
Rodeo Ball attendance was down in 2022, with takeaway sales meaning more people are choosing to drink at home instead.(ABC Far North: Mark Rigby)
For Michael Yam, a former mayor of the Kowanyama Aboriginal Shire Council the resumption of takeaway alcohol sales at the community’s canteen is a return of the rights and responsibilities of the townspeople.
“It’s about time they gave us something back,” he said.
“It’ll probably minimize the sly grogging because, as we know, in our community there’s always opportunists that are going to do it.”
And he said there were benefits to people choosing to drink at home, rather than at the canteen.
“Some families take their drinks home so that they can be home with their kids instead of drinking in the club all the time, away from their little ones.”
Lockhart River Aboriginal Shire Major Wayne Butcher said that community’s newly opened canteen had been “14 years in the making.”
“It’s created 10 new jobs in the community overnight so it’s great to see a lot of young people working as crowd controllers, security or people serving alcohol behind the bar and preparing food,” he said.
“That’s the other side of the coin that we don’t get to look at too much or focus on.”
Australia’s first prime minister, Edmund ‘Toby’ Barton, was many things: A leader, a visionary and as one of his obituaries summed up, “a great Australian.”
And, according to author Matt Murphy, he was also “an outright drunk.”
“If you look at our early parliaments — drunkenness was just accepted.”
And Barton is far from an exception. Since colonial times, Australia has been a country soaked in booze, as drinking has been both a national pastime and a source of untold harm and tragedy.
But is it finally starting to change?
colonial roots
When the First Fleet set off from England 235 years ago, its cargo was indicative of the kind of country Australia would become.
The first governor of the NSW colony, Arthur Phillip, insisted on bringing two years’ worth of carefully rationed food for the new settlement, in case conditions were inhospitable for agriculture.
He also took along four years’ worth of rum.
“The marines, who came to escort the First Fleet, insisted and insisted and finally got their way — to have four years’ worth of rum on board … [But] it didn’t last close to four years,” says Mr Murphy, who wrote the book ‘Rum: A Distilled History of Colonial Australia’.
It’s hard to overstate how important booze was in the first few decades of the colony.
“Alcohol was a currency. If you wanted something done, you had to pay for it. How were they paying for it? With booze,” Mr Murphy says.
“There’s lots of records of people buying and selling things for rum. For example, buying land in [the Sydney suburb of] Pyrmont for rum or selling your wife for rum.”
The NSW Corps, or the permanent regiment of the British Army, became known as the Rum Corps because they controlled the access to alcohol.
As the colony grew, rum was made locally and imported. But this wasn’t the kind of rum we know today.
“rum [became] a generic term … People were making ‘rum’ from potatoes and making ‘rum’ out of peaches. There was hooch, backyard rubbish. People died on the spot drinking some of this, they went blind. It was pretty nasty stuff,” Mr Murphy says.
“[But] people would need rum to start their day, like people need their coffee today.”
Alcohol and drunkenness became firmly entrenched in the lives of colonial Australians, which has had an impact to this day.(Supplied: The State Library of NSW)
During these early years of the colony, grog was also introduced to First Nations people, which had incredibly destructive effects.
As the 19th century progressed, demand for rum dropped, but people kept turning to other varieties of alcohol.
The social, economic and health tolls of this much alcohol across Australian society prompted various governments to try and curb drinking habits.
But this came with mixed results.
The six o’clock swill
Starting in 1916, states adopted rules where bars had to close at 6pm.
“It partly came about because of the temperance movement, because they were wanting to cut down on alcohol consumption,” says Richard Midford, an adjunct professor at Curtin University’s National Drug Research Institute and a clinical psychologist.
“But it came into place during the First World War, in a major part, because people felt that the homefront shouldn’t be having a good time while the boys were away fighting in France.”
Photographer Max Dupain captured the ‘six o’clock swill’ in 1940s Australia.(Supplied: The State Library of NSW)
But the ‘six o’clock swill’, as it became known, had an unintended consequence — a culture of extremely heavy drinking developed, where workers would drink as much as they could between clocking off at 5pm and the 6pm bar closures.
It was not pretty. Bars would lay sawdust on the floor to soak up patrons’ urine and vomit, while many were refitted with tiled walls and floors (a feature which remains today) to make cleaning easier.
“It lasted from the time of the First World War right through, in some states, to the 1960s,” Professor Midford says.
Patrons at the Northern Club Hotel in Sydney toast the introduction of 10pm closing in 1955.(Supplied: The State Library of NSW)
In 1965, an unlikely invention was introduced to try to reduce drinking—the wine cask.
“The wine cask was invented to preserve wine, not to drink it more quickly,” Mr Murphy says.
“When you take the cork out of wine, it immediately starts to oxidise, it immediately starts to go off. And so the average person would rather drink it than tipping it down the sink tomorrow.
“[Cask wine] doesn’t rust.”
But, he says, “it quickly became just a convenient thing to stick under your arm and take to a party.”
Booze and politics
Alcohol and politics has long been a noxious mix in this country.
Alcohol really doesn’t provide ‘good health’.(Supplied: The State Library of NSW)
According to Mr Murphy, the fact that Australia’s first prime minister was “an outright drunk” isn’t even the most outrageous example. Not even close.
“John Norton was elected in a [NSW] by-election in 1898. When he entered parliament, he was drunk every day,” Mr Murphy says.
“Really, I mean disgustingly drunk, apparently. To such a point that about two months later, he downed his dacks and pissed on the parliamentary carpet.”
Mr Murphy also points to then-governor general John Kerr’s drunken speech at the 1977 Melbourne Cup, which he calls “disgusting”.
An inebriated Kerr rambled on in front of the racetrack audience, noting “life is wonderful for all of us,” before presenting the cup.
loading
“[Bob Hawke] said himself that his most endearing attribute to all Australians was his world record for drinking a yard glass,” Mr Murphy adds.
Hawke entered the Guinness Book for World Records in 1954 for finishing a yard of ale in 11 seconds while he was studying at University College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. But he gave up drinking when he went into parliament and stayed off the grog when he was prime minister.
Mr Murphy says the attitudes of politicians have had a major influence on our drinking culture over the generations.
But recently, there’s been a lot of discussion about how this is actually playing out in Canberra.
“The stuff that’s come out of parliament … is another example of a boozy workplace culture [without] restrictions put in place,” says Nicole Lee, an adjunct professor at Curtin University’s National Drug Research Institute and CEO of drug and alcohol consultancy 360 Edge.
She says parliament and other workplaces need to become spaces where “we do think about women; and people from culturally diverse backgrounds; and people who don’t want to drink; and people who don’t want to be around people who are drunk at work”.
Part of the culture
Experts say the centuries of heavy drinking have meant booze is now closely interwoven with Australian culture.
“We’ve got that sense that if you go anywhere in Australia, socially, that there’ll be alcohol there and you’re expected to drink it,” Professor Lee says.
Professor Midford adds: “There’s a very strong culture of going out and deliberately getting drunk. If you have that sort of culture, the sorts of harms that are going to occur, in terms of violence and sexual predation, are going to be much higher “.
Today, there’s a patchwork of drinking habits across demographics.
“There is some indication that people in middle age are actually drinking more — and a lot of that is driven by women drinking more,” Professor Lee says.
Binge drinking continues to be a problem in Australia.(Getty Images: Brook Mitchell)
People in the country drink more than people in urban areas.
“The further you go away from a major city, the higher the drinking levels and the higher the risky drinking,” Professor Lee says.
And there are different drinking habits among Indigenous Australians, who often get lumped into one group.
“Fewer First Nations people drink, compared to the general community, but those that do drink tend to drink at higher levels,” Professor Lee says.
“Factors of colonisation, of the stolen generations, of trauma — all of those things are linked to higher alcohol consumption.”
On the decline
Yet there are cracks appearing in our close relationship with booze.
We’ve recently seen the rise of the ‘sober curious’, as Dry July has become increasingly popular, along with zero and low-strength alcohol products.
Non-alcoholic wines can now be found in supermarkets around Australia.(ABC RN: Nick Baker)
As perceptions around alcohol are slowly starting to shift, overall drinking rates are starting to go down in Australia — thanks to one particular demographic.
“[The fact that] drinking rates are going down is nearly entirely driven by young people,” Professor Lee says.
“People in their 20s are still the heaviest drinking group, but fewer of them are drinking. Those that do drink are drinking less [than previous generations] and they’re starting later… It’s a really big shift.”
So what’s behind this shift among young people? Experts say it’s thanks to a mix of education, awareness and different priorities.
“There’s a lot more talking about [alcohol consumption]. It’s a lot more visible when there’s problems — those problems are more often reported on,” Professor Lee says.
“[Young people] are being healthier, they’re probably more conscious of their appearance — alcohol is really the only drug that makes you fat by just taking it … Also I feel like young people are much more ambitious than my generation.”
Or, as Professor Midford puts it: “Young people are much more savvy, I think, about the effects of alcohol than those 20 or 30 years ago.”
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A woman who fatally injured a pedestrian with her car in the Adelaide Hills later told police she had drunk two sixpacks of beer before getting behind the wheel.
Key points:
Lisa Trewren hit and killed pedestrian David Hoy on Mount Barker Road
The judge said she was cowardly in trying to dissuade a passenger from calling police
She will spend time in jail and be banned from driving for 15 years
Lisa Marie Trewren, 39, was sentenced today to eight years in prison for the death of 31-year-old David Hoy at Totness on December 20 last year.
Mr Hoy – who was also known as Amy – had been collecting cans on the side of Mount Barker Road that night when Trewren lost control of her car and struck him, causing fatal injuries.
The District Court heard she had earlier driven from Murray Bridge to her ex-partner’s house at Hahndorf.
David Hoy collected cans and bottles for money and to keep the streets clean. (Facebook)
The man told police they drove to a beach where Trewren stayed in the car drinking beer to the point of vomiting.
The court heard on the return to Hahndorf, Trewren insisted on going back to Murray Bridge, ignoring warnings from her former partner not to drive, a decision the sentencing judge called “astonishing”.
“By your selfish and totally irresponsible and drunken action that night you would take the life of another person,” Judge Paul Muscat said.
Immediately after fatally injuring Mr Hoy, a passenger in Trewren’s car rang police, prompting threats from Trewren that were recorded by the police operator.
“That you later attempted to dissuade [the passenger] from calling the authorities was not only totally unacceptable but selfish and cowardly behaviour,” Judge Muscat said.
Trewren was already disqualified from driving for a drink-driving charge in May last year.
Trewren’s car after the crash on Mount Barker Road at Totness.(abcnews)
In sentencing, Judge Muscat acknowledged Trewren’s problems with mental health, which deteriorated after her mother died in 2019 and contributed to her drinking as well as her remorse and early guilty plea.
But he said her actions carried a high level of moral culpability.
Trewren’s sentence was discounted by 25 per cent for an early guilty plea.
She must serve four years and nine months before being eligible for parole and is banned from driving for 15 years upon release.
