drinking; not drinking

Through this last ‘winter,’ certain state government bods deemed it a good idea to try to encourage the citizenry to holiday in their own backyard. The Central Wheatbelt, a vast area of undulating, dry, salt-affected wheat-and-sheep farmland, was one of the fine destinations posited. Then just last week, as Skinny City celebrated some milestone or other, one of the main city streets, St. Georges Terrace, was festooned with banners also exhorting the proud regions of rural W.A. And which one did I espy first: you guessed it, that for the Central Wheatbelt. The banner itself seemed to be made of a hessian bag and featured a picture of… wheat sheafs and sheep.

Now, no one loves the Central Wheatbelt more than I do, but surely the state government needs to exercise a duty of care here. What none of this promotional material mentions is the evil that lurks ’neath these images of lusty wheat and wholesome sheep. You see, the good people of the Central Wheatbelt hide a dark secret: they don’t want you to drink.

Like so many of the stories that provide structure in this part of the world, it all started about a hundred years ago. And, again like so many stories in this part of the world, it’s mostly your fault. No doubt you’ve been told many times how your great-grandfather Bert was sent packing to the Wheatbelt in the early 1920s, where he met your soon-to-be great-grandmother Lillian.

Lillian was a god-fearing Methodist. She was all astir back then on two issues: first, the church being proposed for a site on the river next to the new bridge – one of the congregation had heard of a new building material called asbestos that would not burn and would keep out the heat and the cold (Praise be to the Lord for his bounty); second, the increased incidence of drinking and dancing. Great-grandmother Lillian didn’t brook either.

Now, it’s hard to police dancing – just ask the British troops in Ireland – but drinking, well, that’s first and foremost an economic transaction and Lillian knew this well. She and her cohorts fought the good fight for years, and in 1926 they succeeded in getting a temperance vote placed on the ballot in Western Australia.

It was, in hindsight (ah, hindsight), ludicrous, quixotic, dumb-arsed: there was never any chance it would succeed. As expected, the heavily populated areas of Fremantle and the Goldfields – rows of terraced-housed, blue-collar, beer-lovers through and through – voted by wide margins against the drink ban. The attempt to introduce prohibition was resoundingly defeated.

Yet, one region of Western Australia was strongly in favour. Uh huh: the Central Wheatbelt. Nearly six in ten adults there affirmed their opinion that neither they nor anyone else should partake of the demon drink.

Thanks goodness, in those days rural, unrepresentative minorities did not have the power to hold the whole country to ransom.