Thursday, September 12, 2024

National Beer Day

 

A brief history of 'National Beer Day'...

Let me set the scene for you. It was 1998, on the northern outskirts of Penrith, in the historical suburb of Cranebrook. A house perched on a hill, overlooking the then-newly-created Penrith Lakes, and a line of century-old olive trees between the edge of the suburb and the undeveloped land beyond... These were teenage years, the time of jamming in the garage on crappy $100 instruments, riding around all night long in cars because you were too young to go to the pub, and going to boozy parties in people's backyards where parents sent you packing by 9pm.

Enter Mitchell, a young enterprising lad with a dream. This dream was called 'National Beer Day', and it was to take place on the first weekend of November every year.

In reality, it was just a party. The first National Beer Day took place in my garage/backyard at Mitchell's insistence. My house was opposite the aforementioned Cranebrook olive trees on the top of a hill that overlooked the Penrith Lakes. I was crook as a dog and I didn't really want my mates coming over to drink a bunch of beers in front of me but peer pressure did its thing and I even forced myself to drink a beer to show solidarity with the 7 or so people who attended. It was a painful drink because my throat was so sore at the time. I then told everyone they should go out somewhere and leave me behind, so they did. And that was the first National Beer Day.

National Beer Day 2, 1999. South Penrith hosted it's only National Beer Day, a party of about 20 people or so at a rental house (hi Megan!).

National Beer Day 3, 2000. This took place in another friend's garage (hi Mick!) in Cranebrook and was also about 7 people or so. It was a little underwhelming, but Mitchell's passion did not die. 

[National Beer Day 2001, Left to Right] Pablo (Save Some For Daddy), Sean, James (Vanity Star), Marko, Adam (Barkode), Pat (Dyasphere)

National Beer Day 4, 2001. Back to Cranebrook as I now had my own rental property that I lived in alongside my brother Jon and my housemate George Fotakopolous. My involvement in the local music scene as part of The Shenanigans meant that this was now a bit of a happening party. National Beer Day was always meant to move around but, as few of my friendship group had their own place, it was decided by Mitchell that this rental house (colloquially known as the Ben Nevis Hotel, creatively named after its address on Ben Nevis Rd) would host subsequent National Beer Days for the forseeable future. 

The first of the NBD Games at National Beer Day 2002. Note the red and white NBD shirts.

National Beer Day 5, 2002. This is when things started to shift and it ceased to be a thing for just one group of friends. Yes, the name is generic and the idea behind it is paper-thin, but something happened in 2002 that transformed National Beer Day into something of a pre-internet meme. We made merchandise and people bought it to wear... in our backyard. We created games and events that people could watch... in our backyard. We put on food and it was generally a positive vibes-only party.

NBD 2003 - Snake Races involved racing without using one's arms or legs.

National Beer Day 6, 2003: If one single National Beer Day could be described as the National Beer Day, I would say it was this one, the final one to take place at the Ben Nevis Hotel in Cranebrook and the final National Beer Day to not include bands. I decided, in an act of bold stupidity, to advertise the party online via the Bombshellzine.com forum which, at the time, was a great way for bands and music fans to network and talk nonsense across the states. It resulted in 250 people making the pilgrimage to Penrith and then to Cranebrook, people from Queensland and Sydney, lots of people who'd never met each other in person before but knew of each other via online ridiculousness. This party just about broke our rental house at the time, with someone running right into the fence and busting it open, which outraged the neighbours. There were more games, like Snake Races, Jelly Wrestling, and The Bounce Off. Some random guy fell asleep on our lounge and we simply walked the lounge outside and tipped him onto the lawn. The party was big enough for a shirtless stranger to come running in off the street... he attempted to blend into the crowd but was promptly tackled by the two police officers who had been pursuing him through Cranebrook that night. Again, for all its eventfulness, I seem to recall that it was a pretty chill night with positive vibes-only.

Click here for more about NBD 2004

National Beer Day 7, 2004. Mitchell and I became ambitious this year. It also didn't help that myself, my brother Jon, and my old flatmate George, did not live at the Ben Nevis Hotel any more. My dad had a mostly unused property up at Putty at the time so we convinced him to let us host the party there. Have you ever been to Putty? Or heard of it before? It's not really a place, just a vague location along an old trucking road that connects the Hawkesbury to Cessnock, and it takes forever to get to. We hired portaloos, a minibus to transport people, and a generator so bands could play in the middle of nowhere (Putty doesn't have any electricity, that's how remote it is). By this point it was expected that we would create T-shirts to help fund the party so I decided to help bolster this funding by creating a dodgy National Beer Day compilation CD. We sold a few of these... I'd hesitate to say they'd be worth anything now though as they were a burnt-CD home job. About 100 people attended the Putty National Beer Day and camped out. It was a good time. My main memory is that, when my friend Shane got back to Penrith, he fell asleep after consuming some ridiculously hot chili sauce. While sleeping, he wiped his eye, and then woke up to find it so swollen that he couldn't see out of it. 

Bands who played at NBD 2004:

Steppin' Razor at NBD 2005

National Beer Day 8, 2005. As fun as Putty was, it was also a logistical nightmare to organise, so we decided to put on National Beer Day as a show at the Gearin Hotel in Katoomba. Bands played, various online friends made the trek from as far as Forster (hi Bones!), and about 30 people crashed out in the incredibly run-down rooms above the bar. 

Bands who played NBD 2005:

National Beer Day 9, 2006. By this point myself and my old flatmate George were living in a sharehouse again. This was a hundred-year old rental house in Penrith that we'd imaginatively dubbed The Union (it was on Union Road). After a previous party with bands had gone relatively well here we decided to return to National Beer Day's house-party roots. Around 150 people attended and a big lineup of bands played in the loungeroom, including two bands who were on tour from Queensland at the time. It was very DIY - we set up a drum riser in the tiny loungeroom by placing some detached doors on top of some besser blocks. Lacking a proper microphone stand, we shoved a mop between some bricks and then taped a microphone to the top of it. The highlight was probably Rex Banner playing, which prompted some crowd surfing in the lounge room. Being an old house, the roof was one of those really high ceilings. This makes all the more impressive the fact that someone's footprints were left on it.

Bands who played NBD 2006:

National Beer Day 10, 2007. In the tradition of most things, National Beer Day's ten-year run ended with a whimper. People were getting older and no one was willing to hand over the use of their house for a party of this size, so we tried to turn it into a pub crawl in the Rocks. I think only ten people attended in the end, which is fitting considering how small this event was when it started. The highlight was National Beer Day diehard Matt Black asking the house band at a pub if he could sing with them, and then performing 'Mack the Knife' perfectly. We didn't even know he could sing... in those days we just knew him as Parramatta Matt. These days he fronts boisterous folk-punk band The Bottlers. 

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