Transcript of AE 1016 - Are Aussies All Alcoholics? | Drinking Culture Down Under

G'day, you mob. Pete here, and this is another episode of Aussie English. The number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So, today I have a Goss' episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news whether locally down under here in Australia or non-locally overseas in other parts of the world.

Okay, and we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss'. So, these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English.

So, it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the academy membership at AussieEnglish.com.au, where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time.

Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time, keep practising, and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode, guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

How you going?

Good, how are you?

Good. Long-time no see.

You're opening another one.

It's Kombucha, don't panic.

Kombucha. I'm still on the...

Apple cider vinegar.

...Vinegar. Yeah, I'm still on my glass of water.

Yeah. Although far out. I've been drinking a bit more.

... Gin and tonic straight after this, I think.

Yeah, I've been drinking a lot more now that it's locked down, I tell you what.

I've been drinking less, I think, because I haven't been seeing you.

I think it's just...

Not that you drive me to drink, it's just the social aspect.

Well, for us, I think it's more that relaxation thing. So, at the end of the day, you're just like, give me a damn beer, Jesus.

Yeah. I probably have, you know, a gin and tonic or two about three or four nights a week and maybe a glass of wine. That's about it. It's funny, I'm not a beer drinker by myself, but it'll be my drink of choice if I go out with somebody, I'll just sit and drink beers all night. But I won't sit and open a beer at home, but which is a bit weird. I won't drink whisky by myself, either. And I love, as you know...

Yeah, I'm sort of the same. That's why I've got so much in my closet here, dad...

Yeah, because you just don't sit there and gargle away. It's a social thing.

Well, and this is this weird thing. I had this article that I was reacting to, I wonder if I can find it. I should try and spin you past it. But one of the things in it was differences between America and Europe, and it was like waking up in the morning and having a drink.

I can't remember if this was like something that's done in Europe or something that's done in America. And I was just like, surely that's like just alcoholics? That's not...

Exactly.

...Not the norm anywhere, right?

No, I wouldn't have thought so. I don't know- Well, you've been to France, I haven't. But I don't know that people in France who are, you know, some of the biggest wine drinkers in the world will get up in the morning and have a glass of wine with their porridge or their eggs and bacon.

I don't remember that, not that bit.

...Certainly drink. And I know, you know, almost everybody from teenagers onwards who drink wine with dinner. But that's just what they do. It's...

Let's go down this route. Let's do this for this episode, drinking cultures. Because that was one of the interesting things I noticed, the story time. When we went to France, so I went to France in 2003? 2003, right, when I was 16. 2003, 2004, one of those years. So, we were in- We flew to Paris and then did a tour down- We took the TGV to Toulouse and then went to Montpellier and then all the way back up to Paris.

But you know, that was a two-week trip, seeing all these different castles and bits and pieces. And I remember when we got to back to Paris, we went to Chantilly, which is a town to the northeast, I think of Paris. Yes. Yeah, that's where it's from.

And lace, lace and cream. That's what it's famous for.

Yeah. And so, we went to the school there, and there were two really weird things that I noticed when I was staying with my host family. One, they kind of allowed their daughter to just have a little bit of wine, you know, with dinner or whatever, which was something that you guys never did for us, at least that I remember. And I mean, you might have given us a tiny bit when we were like 17, almost 18 if we'd really asked.

But I can't imagine you just giving us a glass of wine.

Nah. We certainly wouldn't have done what the typically, my, you know, French and Italians do. And that is that if you're sitting at, you know, the dinner table with the adults, everybody has a wine glass, and the bottle of wine will be distributed. And it's not like you're going to sit there drinking wine all night, but everybody will have a bit of wine with dinner.

Well, that was the weird thing. So, I remember- I don't remember if it was when we were going to school for the week in Chantilly or if we- If it was when we were touring around. But there was one point where half the class got maggoted. Because they worked out they could go into the supermarket or whatever the equivalent there is...

...Buy alcohol from the supermarket.

...And just buy bottles of vodka. And being 16, you know, in Australia, we could never do that. You'd have to wait until you're 18 to be able to buy alcohol and you have to show your licence or some ID. And so, over in France, they just have to have their passports, I think. I don't even know if they had to show ID.

I think you just have to look 18.

Yeah. Well, and that's- I don't even know. I wonder what it is. I should probably look this up. Drinking age law, France. Let's see what- Sixteen and above.

Sixteen. Yes. So, there you go.

Oh, no. What is it here? Wine and beer from the age of 16. Hard liquor from 18. Okay.

There you go.

That's interesting that they differentiate between those two.

But I bet it was the girls who were buying it because your average 16-year-old girl looks 20, you know, you can't distinguish it. So...

That's it. So, I think the girl's got a few of these bottles of vodka and just got tanked. And I remember spending the night taking care of some of the guys. Because I didn't drink. At that point. I only started drinking, I think, when I was 23?

Something like that. Yeah.

Would have been after I had my wisdom teeth out, because I got messed up on whatever the drug was that they gave me there and I...

...Thought, hey, I'll try this again.

Well, the doctor was like, it's like just being tipsy and drunk. And then I was like, okay...

Okay.

...Sold.

Yeah, I need to go and speak to that dentist, I think.

Yeah, that's it. So, I remember, yeah, they got shit faced, and the French kids' kind of were just like, what are you doing? So, it was really interesting seeing that juxtaposition between cultures where because the French kids had it available to them, you know, at dinner and it was just never seen as a big deal. They didn't, at least the ones that I was around, they didn't have that drinking culture of, oh my god, I'm 16.

Let's get some vodka and get messed up. Whereas the Aussie kids went over there and just, you know, I remember the next day we were trying to walk through the streets of whatever small French village it was and sightsee and all these, you know, the girls were vomiting in the street whilst they were walking around. And one of the teachers was like, oh, it seems to be a stomach bug going around.

Oh yeah, yeah, vodka induced stomach bug. We drank a lot of vodka trying to kill it, but it didn't work.

I wonder. Looking back, I'm like- Now, I'm like, I wonder if she knew, and she was being sarcastic.

That reminds me of when I was a similar age. I think, I would have been 16. I hadn't- Because I remember it was May in 1974 on a school trip. We didn't get the luxury of going to France. We were- Originally, we were going to go to the Northern Territory, drive up through South Australia in a bus and go to the Northern Territory. But there were floods there while we were there, and we got stranded.

So, I've actually stayed at Woomera, the Rocket Range for four days- Four nights. So, it was five days spent there while the roads- While the roads dried out. And the organisers of the trip decided that whichever road opened first, we would go on. Cos this is back when that Sturt Highway was dirt, it wasn't paved.

So, yeah, whichever way the road opened, which basically was whichever road dried out first, the road south or the road north we were going to take. And the road south dried out first. So, we ended up going to Western Australia instead of the Northern Territory. And one of the places we stayed at was a beautiful little town called Esperance, and it still is a beautiful little town I'm led to believe.

I haven't actually been back there since, but plenty of other people have. And we were staying in a camping ground, we were, you know, camping in tents. And it was about, I suppose, you know, three kilometre walk into town, and I think they put us there because they figured it'd be safe enough.

But a handful of us decided one night that we were going to go and visit the post office. So, we're gonna go and post letters and postcards back home.

Oh yeah.

So, we went to the post, which we did. We actually did...

...For 10 seconds.

...Funnily enough, there's a pub across the road from the post office, so, you know, we thought, why not? You know, we'll, you know, we'll go and have a have a drink and then- We walked along the beach, walked a couple, you know, two or three kilometres along the beach up into town, and, you know, we'll just go and have a drink and then we'll walk back along the beach to the camping ground.

How old were you?

I just- This would be fine. 16. And there were year 11s, you know, the equivalent of what we would now call year 11 and year 12, the time we called it fifth form and sixth form at school. So, there would have been 16, 17-year-olds there.

Yeah.

So, I don't think there would have been anybody who was 18, which is the legal drinking age in Australia. And so, we went, you know, sitting in the bar, having a drink. And then three of the five teachers who were with us walked into the bar.

And they're all young. And this is when I- When I was in high school, we were in a- In the early 70s, there was a real lack of high school teachers in Australia, where there just wasn't enough of them to go around. And so, there were a lot of European, American, British, in fact, we even had one Egyptian young teachers, first year out teachers who came to Australia.

And the Victorian government were paying them more than- A lot more than they would have been paid to teach in their own home country. Plus, they were paying the airfares, and I think they got a year's worth of accommodation and stuff, so it was really a pretty good deal. So, we had a lot of young teachers that time, and these were, you know, these people were 22, 23 years old.

So, there were three of them who walked into the bar, and the five of us were sitting around the table. And the two girls that were with us went, oh, shit. We're in trouble now. And I just said, no, we're not. We're all right. And they said, what are you talking about? I said, I'll take care of this. So, I walked over to these three, because I knew two of them quite well.

They were both- They had both taught me for a year or two beforehand. And they looked at me and went, what the hell are you doing here? And I said, I can say the same thing to you. And they went, you buy, we'll shut up. So, we bought them a couple of rounds, so.

And then the next night, we're going down to the post office. No, you're not. So, yes. So, that one was one where the teachers actually didn't quite facilitate it because we were already there. But they agreed not to say anything, because they knew full well that, you know, while they were supposed to be back in the campground supervising students, they weren't supposed to be at the pub drinking.

Jesus.

Quite funny.

So, yeah, what do you think of Australian drinking culture compared to, say, America or Europe? I guess that's what we were sort of getting started with.

...Well...

...There is a big difference with, I feel, at least between France and Australia, I can't really expand it further than that.

...Travelled in continental Europe, so I can only go by reputation.

You've only been to Great Britain...

I've been to Britain, four or five times now, which is, you know, not greatly different from Australia. There are some differences in British pub culture rather than drinking culture, I suspect. In that, you know, British pubs are like a sort of little community centre almost that, you know, people just tend to congregate there.

And yes, they drink, but there's always food and there always has been. And so, it's a sort of a place to go to socialise, which is the same, you know, typically with pubs here. But particularly little country towns in Australia, pubs are like that, that it becomes the congregational place for people to go to...

The watering hole.

...Clubs are the same.

Yeah, the watering hole and sporting clubs are the same in country towns. You know, the football club, the cricket club, the bowls club, the golf club, the netball club. Funnily enough, a few years ago, most netball clubs, netball almost exclusively is played by girls and women in Australia.

And football and cricket clubs used to be almost exclusively men. Now a lot more women are now playing football and cricket, thankfully, and but netball and football clubs combined. Obviously, they realised that if they wanted socially, particularly in country towns and suburbs, you know, feel the social centre, why not have men and women together.

So, they did. But- So, those clubs have become the sort of, you know, pub equivalents, if you like, of people go down to the local club and have a drink and a meal and stuff, so. And so, I think there's an element of that sort of drinking culture that is around socialising and so on. It's going to a place that will serve you alcohol, it's not going to a place to drink alcohol, if that makes sense.

You know, when I was a teenager in early 20s, I used to go to the local hotel quite a lot, you know, even before I was 18. But it wasn't- You didn't go down there to get drunk. You went there to socialise with your friends. It was the place to go to socialise. And yes, there was food available.

And by the time I was going to it, you know, we'd gone past 10 o'clock closing, there were, you know, midnight closing on bars that had bands. So, you can go and listen to live music and so on. So, it was a place to be.

Do you think that mobile phones kind of ruined that sort of- What would you say? The sporadicity? I don't know. The sporadicness?

Spontaneity.

Spontaneity of just catching up where you would be like, well, we'll just all show up at this place on a regular basis?

Yeah. You knew you were going to see people on a Friday night or a Saturday night at the pub. And sometimes you would...

...Happens the same way anymore, right? Like...

Yeah, it probably doesn't. I don't know.

Because you'd organise it. You'd just be like, I'm here, I'll text you, boom. You know, it's like, oh, okay. I'll be there, too.

...Typically we would, you know, Friday night at the pub is a good example. You know, when I was 18 or 19. And then the question would be, are you going to be here tomorrow night? You know, Saturday night or no, I'll see you next week or no, I can't make it.

But then there'll be other times where- I probably didn't go too often by myself, but it just be, you know, one mate. You drop around to their place at, you know, seven o'clock on a Friday night and say, hey, do you want to go to the pub? You'd go and you'd know half the people there. Whereas now I think you're probably right. There's a lot more of the, you know, we've got our own little friends text messaging group.

We go, hey, we're going to the Barwon Heads Hotel or we're going to go to, you know, Fred's place and we'll get pissed, you know. Whatever it happened to be, I think there's a lot more of the, you went to the place because you knew other people were going to be there, whereas now it's more we'll organise to go and, you know, go to wherever people want to be. Very similar idea, but the structure behind it is a bit different.

So, how would you characterise Australian drinking culture compared to American?

Look, I think it's very similar.

We don't have the frat stuff, right? So...

No, we don't. Well, yeah, that again is not so much drinking culture. That's just, you know, idiot men with nothing better to do, young men with nothing better to do. And usually, they're idiot young men who have got money. Because if you're going into a fraternity, in a fraternity house in particular, you're paying a lot of money to go and live in this house while you go to university.

Yeah.

So, I think it's a different mentality. We don't have that concept. We have- We don't have fraternities in higher education in Australia.

We would have- The closest thing would be like those colleges, right?

Yeah, if you go to a college, residential, you know, halls, which...

Although, they have people like, you know, manning them and supervising you generally to make sure that, that sort of...

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I had- I'd, you know, stayed- I lived at home when I was an undergraduate student at university and- But I had friends in college, you know, the residential halls at University of Melbourne. And, you know, every now and then there'd be a, you know, one of my friends would say, hey, you know, come over and have dinner at the college. And you'd go, I'm not dressed for it.

Because often you'd have to dress up, you know, back in the 70s. But often it was, oh, well, we'll just come round to my room later. And, you know, if you knew where, though, you could get in. Some of them had external doors, and so you can just go and bang on the door. Others, you needed to let them know when you were coming, and then they'd have to come and let you in because you needed a, you know, key pass to get into the big halls.

That was my experience when I was at Uni, as well, with friends at the different colleges, it was pretty much the same.

There was no sort of random things, but yeah, there are certainly a couple of nights that I've spent sleeping on the floor in friends' rooms after being out partying and- I know, you know, and I won't use her name, but...

Cos she'll be listening.

She might. Yeah, I doubt whether she'd be listening. But, yeah, one female friend of mine who was at a college there, I slept on her floor a couple of times and, you know, purely platonic relationship. There was never anything. She had boyfriends at the time, but. And I know there are a few funny looks that we got walking out of her room together in the morning.

But, you know, that sort of thing happened. But yeah, that's a sort of an aside for the drinking thing. So, yeah, we don't have this fraternity idea. And certainly, those colleges didn't have a drinking culture. There was no, you know, big time parties in people's rooms because there are always people supervising and, you know, you'd be very quickly told to shut up by 10 o'clock at night.

There weren't the raging parties and stuff, whereas, you know, if what we had to believe by what I understand are fraternity houses and things are and sorority houses as well, you know, the female equivalent in America. There is no supervision there, they're just a bunch of kids living in a house and effectively unsupervised, not that your average 18- to 20-year-old should have to be supervised, but.

But yeah, we used to go to pubs a lot and I don't know what you did when you were at university, you didn't drink until you were effectively finished undergraduate university, so.

Yeah, pretty much.

Yeah.

No, a lot of people did that. I mean, again, though, going to Melbourne University, there were always just so many pubs around and they would have been the same pubs you went to.

Yeah. Oh, exactly. Well, funnily enough, there's- There is actually a bar on Melbourne University campus now. There was always the bar in University House, but that was for staff and faculty only and they had to be a member.

Was that the one upstairs in Union House?

No, but there is now a bar in Union House, that wasn't there when I was there, and just the student bar. And everybody used to say, well, you know, you'd get visitors from other universities. So, how come there's no bar on campus. And you'd go, there's 42 hotels within a kilometre of the university, we don't need another bar on campus.

Go to the corner of any street out here, and you'll find one.

Exactly. So, yeah, there were the three usual suspects, the bars that we used to go to, all of which still exist. One of which nearly burnt down, but it's been rebuilt. Prince Alfred, PA's, I don't really know whether you have it used to go to PA's, but yeah. But I think that sort of pub culture, though, again, when we're getting back to what I was saying in the beginning, wasn't about binge drinking.

It wasn't, you know, go out and get pissed and, you know, vomiting in the street stuff. It was just about being out and socialising. Yes, you know, every now and then you'd have too much to drink. You wouldn't be driving home or, you know.

And I'm sure there are several friends of mine, I don't think- From memory it never happened to me. But there may be some alcohol induced memory loss here. But, you know, I was never vomiting in the street on the way home and stuff, but.

But- And there were, you know, certainly at parties, if you went to people's house to party, at the parties there was binge drinking going on there. So, that sort of party drinking, and pub drinking was just a very different culture, different idea.

We had that growing up. But I think, especially at high school, I think I noticed once we were about 15 or 16 that there were a lot of, you know, you would have sleepover parties where obviously you couldn't drive, so you get dropped off somewhere and people would bring out the goon or they'd have some cheap beer. And, you know, a lot of the guys- There'd always be a few guys that would just take it too far and end up just wasted.

And I never just got into that because at the time I thought, I'm a loose unit as it is. I don't know what I'd be like if I was drunk. So, I was always just petrified. If I get drunk, I'm going to, you know, just be even worse than I am normally. In terms of just, you know, hyperactivity, sense of humour, wildness.

Yeah.

Turns out that alcohol actually slows me down and I just want to sleep.

You just go to sleep.

But I remember there were a few times, you know, I think we all have those, right, when you first start drinking and you're like, wow, you know, I have one and then you sit on it and your just like, I feel really good. And then the next time, you know, or later on that night, your like, I might just have four and just see what happens, like, I'll just do four. One was pretty good, so four can't be that bad.

The trouble with...

...Then you end up, you know...

Completely off your noodle. Yeah. The trouble with consuming things via your digestive system, whether it be marijuana or whether it be alcohol, is that by the time you realise you've had enough, you've had too much.

You're on the train then...

Exactly. And there's only one way of getting rid of it. And by the time you're that pissed, you're not likely to be sticking your fingers down your throat. Sorry. Apologies to everybody there for the bad image, but.

Yeah.

But yeah. So, it's...

Well, I don't think how much- How much is that going to help, right? Like you're still gonna have...

...Most of it's already been absorbed into your bloodstream, anyway. So, yeah.

...I had that memory. I remember, I think it would have been- It would have been James's birthday party was the first time, it would have been his 23rd or 24th, probably 24th if I was 23. And then I remember New Year's is when I got plastered and I remember buying, I think they were double black, Smirnoff double blacks.

You know- I know. Well, and they just taste like sugar drinks, right? So...

Yeah. Well, it's basically, yeah.

And I think I drank four of them...

...Sugar.

...Four of them in half an hour, cans of them. And I was just like, I think I did that at like seven. And I was fucked up until about 11:00 at night. And then I came good after I vomited everywhere. I think I ended up spending...

Charming.

...I spent like...

This is not my son.

I know. Dad doesn't know these stories. I spent; I think...

Oh yeah, James has already told me this.

...Two hours inside of one of his dad's trailers that had just dirt in it, and I just lay on it, and just stayed there. I was like, the world's spinning, come on kidneys and liver and everything. Just do your work.

Do your thing.

And I'm happy for this ride to end and for me to never come back here again. So, it is interesting how we have those things, though, I think- It always shocked me. There was some friends that I had that would go to that limit every single time they drank, and I just never got that. I went there....

Certainly some...

...Once or twice and was like, that's enough. Never again do I...

...Friends of mine, but they were very rare. But I think that's become a thing, you know, this is the grumpy old fart talking, who's been drinking for nearly all his life. But there were very- There was very few just binge drinking going on.

There'd be the odd person at, you know, 21st birthdays who'd, you know, have a few too many and be throwing up over the back fence. But there weren't- It wasn't the idea of doing it. There just seems to be now amongst, certainly people your age and younger who, you know, part of their social life is just going out and getting as wasted as you possibly can.

It's a competitive thing, right? It's that competitive thing, I can jump higher than you. I can go further than you. I can drink more than you. And I think that would be- I can't imagine that it's some sort of new manifestation of human behaviour. I would imagine, though, it's just that...

I mean, I'm hardly a prince. I'd certainly had a lot of occasions where I was out there drinking and probably drinking too much. But, you know, I remember when I was- And I was 18 at the time because it was the end of our- We used to have October exams, practise exams for our final exams at school, which were in November.

And after our October exams, two of the teachers who were, you know, our teachers- Again, these young guys that we've already spoken about, had a house down in Aspendale that backed onto the beach, you know, because there are houses down there with a backyard that actually just goes straight onto the beach. And they were renting this house- Yeah, fantastic places.

But they were renting this place down there and they just said, oh, well, we'll just have an October test party. So, they had 100 high school kids rock up at their place, and we certainly drank a fair bit that night. And I remember- The thing that comes to mind that so much is we went skinny dipping at midnight.

There's about 20 of us that decided that- Fortunately, we're sensible enough to actually take our clothes off. We didn't just go swimming in, you know, fully clothed.

Well, that's not skinny dipping, dad.

No, I know. But if we decided to go...

That's drowning.

...We'll go in in our clothes. And then, you know, being about eight or nine kilometres away from home, walking home in wet clothes wouldn't have been fun at two o'clock in the morning, but. So, we did. We went skinny dipping and this friend of mine that was there, he decided that- I wasn't driving at the time.

But he decided that- He'd driven there, and he decided that he was going to drive us home, and we realised that he was probably too intoxicated when he was trying to undo the lock on his car with his watch. Because that was the only thing he could find in his pocket after putting his pants back on after skinny dipping. So, we walk home and then came back the next day and picked up his car. But yeah. Stupid things you do when you're 18.

Yeah. Far out. Well, there's probably enough for this episode, dad. But thank you.

...Finish on me skinny dipping. It's not a good look now.

I don't have any good stories about getting nude whilst drinking, just vomiting and making a fool of myself, and that was about it.

I've probably made a fool of myself by taking my clothes off and going swimming, but there were about 20 of us that did it, so.

Yeah, and you're all drunk so no one remembered.

And we were all drunk, so nobody remembers.

Awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you for the episode, dad, and we'll see you guys next time.

Thanks, everyone.

See ya.

Alrighty, you mob. Thank you so much for listening to or watching this episode of The Goss'. If you would like to watch the video if you're currently listening to it and not watching it, you can do so on the Aussie English Channel on YouTube. You'll be able to subscribe to that, just search "Aussie English" on YouTube.

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I'm your host, Pete. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you have a ripper of a day, and I will see you next time. Peace!