Favorite Australian experience!

[FCD]

I absolutely love my brethren down-under in Oz.  I spent quite a bit of time working on aviation related projects down in Australia.  Much of it in support of the 2000 Olympic games.  The post about "Drop Bears" reminded me of a funny story about one of my own experiences in Oz.  It was actually my first time coming to Australia.

There's a whole backstory to this which I've posted in another thread, so I won't do it again here, but it doesn't really matter to this particular story.

I'd just gotten off the airplane from Singapore.  It had been a long day; my journey actually started in Malaysia, then we got delayed due to thunderstorms in Singapore.  Anyway...

I'd just gotten off the plane, collected my bags and grabbed a taxi for the hotel.  I was pretty tired, and I figured if I went to my room I'd just crash out.  This was at the Sydney Hilton.  So, I figured before going to my room I should probably go to the bar to get a beer (or five).  I went into the bar and the bartender asked me what I wanted.  I thought to myself...'when in Rome, do as the Romans do!'...sooooo, I promptly placed my order.  "Yeah, lemme have a Foster's"  The bartender paused for a moment, which I thought was odd, and then asked me to repeat myself.  "I'd like a Foster's beer, please".  The bartender paused again (which I thought was odd), shrugged, and then started rummaging through his beer coolers.  One of the barmaid's came to his aid as he was pretty much unloading this whole beer cooler.  "I know we've got one of those in here somewhere!", he said.  "Probably 10 years old by now!", he muttered to her.

I called over to him and said..."Hey, I didn't mean to cause you a bunch of work.  Just give me a beer, I don't care what kind, but just something good."  Well, I guess I must have said something really funny because both he and the barmaid started laughing uncontrollably.  Even a couple of other people at the bar started snickering.  So, I was pretty proud of my joke...whatever it was!

"Eee'ya, troy this, mate", he said, as he plopped down a beer I'd never seen before.  The label said "Victoria Bitters", 'VB' for short.  I took a sip and it was surprisingly good.  "So, what is this stuff?", I asked.  The bartender just laughed and said..."Well, it's a Vey-Bey mate.  I couldn't find no Fostah's for ye, we don' serve much o' that round eeeya.  Vey--Bey is what most aroun' eee'ya drink."  I asked him why not?  His response was epic. ...

"Well, woi'ey don' actually drink 'at piss, mate!...woi'ey just export that swill to all you Yanks!!!"  He, the barmaid and several other patrons all got a hearty laugh, followed by lifted mugs and a "Cheers, mate!  Welcome to AustRALLia!"  Fair enough!  I'd just learned my first Australian lesson.  I would have never dreamed that no one in Australia actually drank..."Fostah's; it's Awestrawlian for bee'ahh" (as the commercial jingle goes).

[NobodySpecial268]

Heh, heh, Aussies do like to take the piss out of the yanks, when we get the chance.

You've reminded me of a ghost story, it is not a story I often tell, for reasons that will become apparent.

I'm Aussie and come to think of it, in my 60 odd years I don't think I've even seen a Fosters, let alone drank one. We all drink the Victoria Bitters, VB everyone calls it.  I had to look it up on wikipedia to see if Fosters still exists. Apparently, a Japanese company now owns the brand. Nothing Aussie about Fosters beer any more. They make it under license in foreign lands.  So "Aussie" Fosters beer is probably all imported now. That's globalisation for ya.

Here in Western Australia, we used to be isolated when it came to beer. Victoria was thousands of miles away, and just a rough gravel road linked the two sides of Australia.  I wouldn't want to know what three days on a bumpy road would do to beer. In those days, we made our own beer next to the river in the city of Perth. That was the Swan and Emu breweries. I lived close enough that in the afternoons when the sea breeze came in, the smell of hops would just about knock you over. That was back in the 1960s, and they eventually moved the breweries away from the city.

So on to the ghost story (cue spooky music).

My first six years were spent in a haunted house. All sorts of things happened there. One night, my mother's night clothes lifted off her bed and floated to the ceiling, then gently floated down. That scared the crap out of her, and to settle her down, the family went to the kitchen to have a cup of tea. That was when the ceiling in the lounge room collapsed, so a friendly warning is my guess.

And then there were the ghosts, and didn't they like to terrorise little kids who could see them. Every day they walked in a procession through the house, same time every day. My uncle could see them too.

My uncle said the dead alcoholics would walk to the Swan brewery, and soak in the vats of brewing beer for the alcohol.  He never drank, by the way. My grandfather on the other hand worked at a vineyard and used to give us kids sherry in the evening. Probably so we would sleep soundly through the night. Maybe that was the reason I could see the ghosts . . .

It is not hard to work out that the deceased contributed something truly horrible to the making of that beer. Swan Lager, which the Swan brewery made, used to have a nickname. 

That nickname was; the ol' wife basher.