The effect of excessive drink is to impair the efficiency of the soldiers, and endanger their health in the way I have mentioned above, and to expose them to temptations they might otherwise avoid.

They invaded a number of local hotels, drinking the bars dry, refusing to pay and started to vandalise buildings.

[3] The soldiers then gained control of Liverpool train station, overpowered the engineers and commandeered trains heading towards Sydney, where they began rampaging drunkenly through Sydney streets, smashing windows and targeting anyone with a foreign-sounding name, including Italian restaurants, even though Italy was an ally of Australia in the war.

At Sydney's Central Railway Station, armed military guards found a group of over a hundred drunken soldiers destroying a toilet block and demanded they surrender.

[4] However, Australia was desperate for recruits to fight the war, so many soldiers escaped punishment and were sent overseas while the government, anxious to keep the image of the Australian digger as positive as possible, discouraged the media from covering the event.

It was not until 1955 that New South Wales closing was extended to 10 p.m.[6] The only remaining physical evidence of the riot is a bullet hole, in marble stonework near the entrance to Platform 1, at Central railway station, Sydney.