Around the World in 20 Drinks: Australia

Australia has what one might deem a ‘complex’ relationship with alcohol. It’s a relationship best summed up through two recent anecdotes. We’ll start with the one involving the pig.

Swino was a feral pig who achieved considerable fame earlier this year when he broke into a campsite in northern Australia and drank 18 cans of beer left unattended by campers. Once spotted, Swino ran away, tried to fight a cow, then fell in a river. Swino hailed from the same part of the country as the Darwin Stubby, the world’s largest commercially available bottle of beer. It measures up at 2.25 litres, and is an ideal gift for the beer fan in your life who also has a soft spot for The Borrowers. 2.25 litres, by the way, is just under seven cans’ worth, or four-tenths of a Swino.

Now Victoria Bitter is one of Australia’s most famous beers, and something of an iconic beverage in the country. Several years ago, its makers decided to fiddle with the formula a little, with one of the changes cutting the alcohol content by three-tenths of one percent. Here in the UK, the natural response would be to start some kind of twee social media campaign with hashtags and the like, but one Australian man decided to use slightly simpler methods to get things sorted.

“I am not f***g happy with the taste of the 'new' product you are providing,” the anonymous consumer wrote, “and you can shove it up your arse! Next thing you know I'll be drinking f***g lattes on the side of the road ! So what the f**k is going on?” Needless to say, the letter went global, and things were soon back to normal thanks to one man’s mildly aggressive yet deftly censored letter.

So that’s alcohol and Australia – there’s lots of beer, the pigs get drunk, and the drinkers come over all poetic if you mess with their booze. All of a sudden, the huge annual gap year exodus to Australia makes a lot more sense...