Six o'clock swill

The six o'clock swill was an Australian and New Zealand slang term for the last-minute rush to buy drinks at a hotel bar before it closed.

[1] Support for changing hotel closing times originally came from the temperance movement, which hoped that implementing restrictions on the sale of alcohol would lead eventually to its total prohibition.

The question had previously been put to the vote in December 1913 when the results of the Local Option Poll were in favour of 11 o'clock closing.

They raided hotels in Liverpool before travelling by train to Sydney, where one soldier was shot dead in a riot at Central Railway station.

[6] Hotels catered for the short heavy drinking period after work by extending their bars and tiling walls for easy cleaning.

South Australia became the last state to abolish six o'clock closing with legislation introduced by Don Dunstan in 1967 and the first legal after-six beer being drunk on 28 September.

[11] An earlier referendum in 1949 had voted three to one to retain six o'clock closing, but there was a partial repeal of the law in 1961 which allowed restaurants to sell liquor until midnight but not hotel bars.

[14] The Great Depression and the Second World War contributed to these trends by lowering disposable income levels, which reduced demand for alcohol.

After the Second World War, with the rise in disposable income and expansion in restaurants and purchases of takeaway liquor, the effects of early hotel closing became less clear-cut.