But on the subject of bad beer, I always thought Fosters was particularly dire … and the letter to the Lazy Aussie from Lion Nathan explains the disappearance of Swan Gold, which I had such a low regard for that I hadn’t even thought about it for 10 years, meaning I wasn’t even aware of the fact that they had actually yanked it (or any other beers for that matter).

One of the biggest blows, I believe, was when they knocked Guinness down from 6.8% to 6% in 2000. I seem to recall they didn’t drop the price of longnecks – they just did this to make us grateful that its price didn’t increase. That was when I switched to SS….

Thank you Rachel @2 for the advice on where to buy the bogan drop. I’ll wear my red and black flannel shirt when I cruise the suburbs in my 1972 HQ this weekend looking for the last of this most fattenening of brews…..

Thanks, TLA. I wasn’t sure. Actually, after I’d posted I surfed around, (sorry), and discovered that St. Kilda beach now has some bloody great pier sewerage outlet thingy smack bang in the middle of the tubes. As you’ll see in this fantastic blog, http://tinyurl.com/4cm8rg the hardy locals are unfazed, and appear to just play chicken with it.

The rock I thought I recognised is definitely Lion’s Head Rock, http://tinyurl.com/4rpjnn so did you roll down those massive dunes at Sandfly Bay ?

I spent 2 wonderful years in magical Dunedin, and whilst the swells were truly daunting, even for someone who’d spent many holidays at Yalingup and Margs, I was often more scared of freezing to death.

@ 13 Bento

I think TLA has wisely outsourced the apostrophe patrol overseas, as it’s precisely the kind of nonsense I’m (over)paid to research, anyway.

I love the old Perth euphemism (which I saw in a Tom Hungerford short story) for alcoholism: “The two birds got him.” The birds in question being Swan Lager and Emu Export.