In 1899 Horan Brothers were the bakers and butchers at Mt Malcolm. Mt Malcolm also had a brewery at this time. One afternoon the WA Bank Manager, Lowry, and his assistant Hamilton invited me to join them. “We are going out to Horans to see the pigs get drunk. Today is the day they get the loads of hop grains from the brewery”.
The grains were tipped out on the ground and about 300 pigs of assorted sizes gorged on the potent mass with the greatest of enthusiasm after which they gave a striking imitation of their human brothers who consume too much of the breweries products.
Drunken Pigs Digital by Daniel Eskridge
It was quite unbelievable! Pigs got too drunk to stand up. Sociable pigs leaned against each other, grunted, then fell over and snored together. Nasty pigs fought each other and the bouts were all similar. One pig would fall over or get knocked over and could not get up and other blery eyed pigs would fall over him. They lay singly and in heaps, mostly on their backs with their legs sticking upmin the air, all snoring, 300 snoring at once! A few of the valiant leaned against the fence and slept, but all gradually toppled and joined the snorers.
The only thing I can compare it with was the one staged by humans during the beer strike in Kalgoorlie in 1897. At this the time the Palace Hotel was being built. The Exchange Hotel across the road was an iron building with a line of two horse cabs in front of it with the drivers shouting, “Right away to the Boulder, two bob to the Block”. They were shovelling two feet of red dust off Hannan Street and replacing it with stone from the old shafts on Mt Charlotte.
I believe therre were 30,000 men in Kalgoorlie and Boulder at the time. No picture shows, motor cars, trams or lipstick and the parade of youth and beauty along the two chain wide street I never saw equalled anywhere. It was a joy to behold and a sight to see.
Then came the beer strike for a sixpenny pot. The brewery owned pubs and the company owned pubs held out for ninepence. I think it was ‘The Black Swan Hotel’ that sold pots for fourpence whilst the fun lasted. Several of the hotels gave in and sold beer for sixpence. One publican got married and gave it away for nothing. Other pubs had free beer intervals. They brought beer up from Perth, Bunbury and every brewery in WA. All the Dryblowers, soaks and prospectors came in from all directions and they celebrated. Beer in Kalgoorlie for sixpence, fourpence and nothing a pot!
They drank manfully and lay where they fell. Believe me or not, when a horse team or vehicle went along Hannan Street, the driver had to stop and drag the drunks out of the way to get a passage for his team. The sulkies nimbly dodged the sleepers. Along side the footpaths lay rows of drunks, dumped there by cursing vehicle drivers.
I never saw anything to equal to these two beastly mass inebriations, the humans of Kalgoorlie forty three years ago and the pigs of Mt Malcolm two years ago.
By Sixtenth of Pemberton
Ref: On Gold by Peter Bridge.
Moya Sharp
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