I used to think the sunshine state was the place for outdoor, under-shade day-drinking down under.
This was an impression formed by fabulous photos of the old Surfers Paradise Beer Garden. A vast paved area, filled with potted palm trees, plastic furniture and bright beach umbrellas – maybe you’d pop in for a pot of gold after a dip in the surf or at the pool at the Beachcomber hotel.
If you were looking for a schooner under the sun in Brisbane, you had the gardens at the Royal Exchange in Toowong, or the Breakfast Creek at Albion, or a spot under the century-old figtree at the Normanby Hotel at Kelvin Grove (lost in the winter storms of 2016). Stories or personal memories of these places gave rise to the idea that Brisbane had a beer garden scene to be proud of.
But now I’ve been to Munich and I’m having a crisis of faith.
There, with my husband, young child and young-at-heart mother, I became yet another Australian to discover the joys of the Chinese Tower at the English Garden. It was a hot, summer afternoon but the beer was cold and crisp and served in glass mugs that reflected the green canopy above. As new leaves on the horse-chestnut trees absorbed the summer sun, the smell of damp, shadowed earth mixed with smoke from a barbecue, where whole mackerel were being transformed into steckerlfisch. Convivial grown-up conversations mingled with squeals, shrieks and giggles from children crawling and falling through timber climbing frames and rope nets. And we four Australians did as Australians are wont to do: we got among it, watching, talking, laughing and admiring the quality of our drinks (lager for the grown-ups, lemonade for the kid). Das war gut.
We returned to Brisbane looking forward to a local version of the experience, and started discussing where we would go for that easy drink, simple food, forest-fort scramble and hefty hit of biophilia. We soon realised it might be hard to find.
Sure, we could think of outdoor drinking places at local pubs. Some of the old places still advertised a beer garden, and many of the new or newly renovated watering holes in the city’s ever-expanding food and drink scene spruiked rooftops or courtyards alongside their craft ales. But we couldn’t think of a single pub that came with a forest of trees and a family-friendly atmosphere. Maybe one of the wineries? Maybe we just needed to get out more.
Although beer gardens were mentioned in Queensland liquor legislation as far back as 1912, they weren’t described in detail that suggests trees or shade or any real sense of a garden. And given that women were banned from the state’s public barsuntil 1970, I’ll hazard a guess they weren’t particularly family friendly. As the justice minister of the day, Peter Delamothe, told the ABC’s Four Corners when Merle Thornton and Rosalie Bogner chained themselves to the bar at the Regatta in 1965, public bars were “not suitable places for the gentler sex to make a habit of frequenting”.
Gross.
Thankfully, times have changed. Women can now drink in pubs, and drinking places now include small bars and boutique craft breweries. Unfortunately, problematic drinking behaviour still exists, no matter how boutique the beer taps are, leading one mate to declare she wouldn’t bring her young family to a beer garden in Brisbane, “even if it were made like the ones in Munich”.
But perhaps that’s just it? Perhaps the next evolution of Queensland’s drinking culture has to do with more modelling of measured, responsible drinking, in settings that are conducive to activities beyond drinking; places that offer a natural beauty that encourages you to remember to pause for thought and enjoy the great outdoors with your friends and your family.
Bavarian Biergartens with a Brisbane twist? I say cheers to that.
Katherine Feeney is a journalist based in Brisbane
