History
It wasn’t all fun and games as the 1940 ‘beer riot’ took to the streets
CHRIS CURRIE delves into the State Library of Queensland’s collections to a time when Australian soldiers rioted in the city, causing destruction and chaos, two years before the infamous ‘Battle of Brisbane’ during World War II.
In 1916, a strong temperance campaign was led by New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania to introduce a 6pm closing time for hotels as a wartime measure intended to reduce drunkenness and improve public discipline.
Queensland debated the idea but never legislated any change.
In 1923, the Sunshine State finally amended its liquor laws to require hotels to trade between 8am and 8pm, Monday to Saturday (no trade on Sundays), replacing the previous trading hours of 6am to 11pm.
Many hoteliers, believing the laws to be commercially ignorant, simply disobeyed the mandated curfew – most without consequence.
The serving of ‘sly grog’ had become a tolerated grey area that kept drinkers happy and hotels profitable.
In late 1940, however, authorities decided to crack down. Police began actively enforcing liquor laws in Brisbane hotels and, in particular, the 8pm close.
By this time, Brisbane had become a major wartime training and transit centre for troops – including Australian Imperial Force (AIF) volunteers awaiting overseas deployment – for whom drinking was a valued leisure activity.
On Saturday, October 26, tensions broke. Just after 8pm, a group of soldiers was ordered out of a Queen Street hotel in which they had been enjoying some beers.
A few began scuffling on the footpath.
A passing police officer, trying to intervene, only made things worse and, before long, hundreds of other soldiers and civilians had joined the fray. As it became clear a full-blown riot was developing, scores of civilian and military police poured into Brisbane’s CBD.
By the time the initial riot was quelled more than four hours later, “hundreds of pounds worth” of plate glass windows and doors from the Grand Central and His Majesty’s hotels had been smashed, a beer keg rolled down Queen Street (reportedly accompanied by strains of Roll Out the Barrel) and trams appropriated by soldiers chanting: “We want beer!”.
Very few images remain of the riot, as soldiers reportedly threatened photographers and journalists trying to get close to the action. The Courier-Mail reported that the soldiers then marched across Victoria Bridge to the Palace Hotel, on the corner of Stanley and Melbourne streets, where they smashed an inside door and broke bottles, refrigerators and furniture.
At midnight, there remained “fully 5000 people still congregated in Queen Street”. By 2am, the soldiers had been shepherded onto Adelaide Street and taken back to military camps.
There was disciplinary fallouts from the riot, but it did lead to the installation of ‘wet’ canteens in AIF camps only a few weeks later, and an extension to general hotel opening hours to 10pm by December the same year.
