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| The Harsh Face of the Western Australian Outback |
Australia is a hard country.
And we mean really hard.
It is hot. It is dry. It is vast.
If your car breaks down in most of Australia, and you are unprepared, you are likely to die.
And that is now. Two hundred years ago would have been unthinkable. No equipment. No search planes. No cars. No phones. Still the chance of being speared by the locals (or, to be fair, saved).
The men were tough. And, at the end of a hard day's work, they valued their beer above almost anything else.
Even, in some circumstances, their mates.
In one tiny outback Western Australia outpost, a few blokes sent off their mate to the nearest town to buy some beer. The poor bloke left, but came back empty handed. The result?
His mates there-upon held a court martial over the erring one and sentenced him to be hanged. Mead was immediately strung up and was left for some time suspended. When taken down he was found to be an insensible condition and almost dead....
Australia's Brewers' Journal, May 1898
It was in this climate that the gold mining towns of Western Australia were born.
Not a place for weak men. The work was hard. Physical. Tough.
Some even said it wasn't a place for women at all - unless you made a living on your back or pulled beers in a pub.
Others claim that the old gold-mining towns haven't changed much at all since those times.
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| The road ahead - to the heart of WA Culture |
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AustralianBeers.com took it upon itself to separate facts from furphy, and sent reviewers to pack their swags and set out east of Perth to sample the outback people, pubs and culture. First stop, the first pub they could find. |
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Take a break from drinking like the author of this article did - Read why and how in his book Between Drinks: Escape the Routine, Take Control and Join the Clear Thinkers
