Beer Mania: Legendary Aussie breweries and brands

The personalities – Paul Hogan 

The sheer Aussieness of Hoges was always bound to be a winner and Foster’s got to him first, using him for a series of ads in the 1980s that screened in Britain and the United States. Is it really ironic that those Hogan ads were considered a little too ocker for Australia? He was, at least on the streetwise-innocent axis, opposed to Barry McKenzie, though they might have been mates. The posters alone for the Foster’s ads say it all about the sort of Aussie you needed to be – and it seemed to be the sort of Aussie most blokes wanted to be.

The campaigns – Hard-earned thirst 

The Victoria Bitter television ads, with their iconic tag ‘Matter of fact, I got it now’ (which kind of overtook the intended slogan ‘For a hard-earned thirst’) and a brilliant voice-over by Australian actor John Meillon, proved one of the most robustly iconic campaigns of all time. They encapsulate so many aspects of the male character and psyche so well and in so many modes they’ve been virtually an art form in themselves. ‘You can get it walkin’, you can get it talkin’, you can get it working a plough . . . matter of fact, I’ve got it now.’

Introduction to Beer Mania 

It says something about the popularity of beer down under that Aussies have so many fondly used slang terms for the beverage consumed from tinnies, schooeys, stubbies, middies, pots, pints, half-pints, longnecks, throw-downs . . . 

It’s often said Australia is a nation of beer drinkers. That was undoubtedly true 50 years ago, yet consumption figures suggest we haven’t been among the world’s biggest beer-drinking nations for decades. It’s probably more accurate to say we are a nation of beer lovers – lovers, that is, of Australian beer culture in its many forms. That can include catching up with mates after work over an ale in a pub; a chilled-out Sunday arvo spent in a beer garden; knocking the top off a home brew; sampling an exotically named craft beer for the first time; starting a beer can collection; or whatever