Australian pubs – PVC accessory system – Wood texture manufacturer
Origin
The Australian pub is a direct descendant of the English Public house. The production and consumption of alcoholic drinks has long played a key role in Western commerce and social activity, and this is reflected in the importance of pubs in the British colonisation of Australia after 1788. However, in the nineteenth century the local version evolved a number of distinctive features that set it apart from the classic British 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.
Nineteenth century development
Pubs proliferated during the nineteenth 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 nineteenth-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 nineteenth 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 ca. 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 twentieth century and while the wine industry grew steadily, wine did not become a major consumer drink until the late twentieth 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 nineteenth 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. This set Australian pubs apart from the British model, where each pub had a specific and legally limited role to sell either beer or spirits.[dubious discuss]
The licensing laws restricted the sale and service of alcohol almost exclusively to pubs for decades. Alcohol could usually only be purchased 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 twentieth 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 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.
Types of beer
Perhaps because of the generally hot, dry climate, Australian beer drinkers soon came to favour chilled pilsener style beers. This trend was reinforced with the expansion and consolidation of the Australian brewing industry, and by the development of hop growing, especially in Tasmania.
The dominance of chilled pilsener beer was further reinforced by invention of refrigeration. Australia was one of the first countries to adopt the new technology on a wide scale and pubs were among the first local businesses to use refrigeration, to keep beer ice-cold.
Another notable feature of Australian beer is its relatively high alcohol content, which for many years has typically ranged between 4 percent and 6 percent alcohol somewhat higher than their British and American counterparts.
Beer production in Australia began with small private breweries supplying local pubs. The industry rapidly became both larger in scale and more centralised as brewers adopted mass-production techniques during the late nineteenth century and new modes of transport came into operation.
By the 1900s the major brewing firms had become very large vertically integrated businesses. They owned the breweries and ran truck fleets and distribution networks, and the major brewers owned chains of pubs across the country. The premises were typically operated on a leasehold basis by licensed publicans.
As they grew, the larger and more successful firms began to take over smaller breweries, although they often retained the older brand names and the loyal clientele of those brands, such as Tooheys continuing to distribute “Tooth’s KB Lager” and “Resch’s Pilsener” and “DA” (“Dinner Ale”) after they had bought and eventually closed the Reschs and Tooths breweries. By the mid-1900s the brewing industry was dominated by a handful of large and powerful state-based companies; the Tooth’s and Toohey’s in Sydney, Carlton United in Melbourne, Castlemaine in Brisbane, West End and Coopers in Adelaide and Swan in Perth. These brands effectively became unofficial mascots for their respective states.
In the late 20th century these beer empires began to expand overseas; Carlton’s Fosters Group and Castlemaine-Tooheys empires now control significant segments of the brewing and beverage industry in Australasia, the UK, Europe and many other regions.
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, a legacy of the influence of the ‘reformist’ Christian Temperance groups in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The concerns of these groups were in some areas well-founded. Alcohol abuse was an endemic social problem in most western countries and, as the local brewing and distilling industry expanded, it quickly became a serious problem in Australia. However, the Temperance movements were driven by a dogmatic Christian world view, and the main agenda of the larger “Christian Morality” movement at this time was to outlaw all forms of social behaviour which went against Christian teaching this included the consumption of alcohol, all forms of gambling and animal racing, prostitution and recreational (non-alcohol) drug use.
Temperance advocates feared with some justification that workers would spend all their time and money in the pub if they were permitted to stay there throughout the evening, and that children and families would suffer as a result (which they often did). Pubs were seen as a nexus for all kinds of immoral activity, including illegal “SP betting”, and the Temperance movement lobbied long and hard to have public houses tightly regulated and their opening hours severely restricted.
In this area, the “Wowsers” (as they were dubbed) were very successful but these high moral concerns backfired, at least in terms of liquor licensing, and the new laws led to the evolution of what was a new phenomenon in Australian 20th century pub culture.
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,
