What you can do with…
Australians are a brilliant bunch of people. Now before you choke on your flat white, hear me out.
It was an Aussie who invented the first vapour compression fridge way back in 1856, and some say it was primarily to keep his beer super chilled; legend.
It was Aussie who invented the feature film too. Interestingly, the first feature film was about Ned Kelly, a bushranger (now national Aussie hero) who took on 100 police in a gunfight at Glenrowan in 1880 wearing a metal suit fashioned out of a potbelly stove. His accomplice was a relative of mine, Harry Power, but that’s another story for another time.
Aussies also invented the notepad, the Black Box recorder, the pacemaker, the bionic ear, zinc cream and a swag of other beneficial things. Go Aussies.
While these inventions are both ingenious and practical, one of Australia's most significant inventions is the cask of wine – aka ‘The Goon Bag’. It was on the way to a mates BBQ back in 1965 that the visionary Thomas Angove realised he needed to be able to carry 4 litres of wine more conveniently and not look like a raging alcoholic, and thus, the wine cask was born.
Now, while this vision was inspired, little did he know that the cask would serve two purposes better than he could ever have imagined.
You can come to a party with enough wine to get you and a few lucky friends completely shitfaced. Still, the genuine appreciation of this invention comes when you realise you have drunk all four litres yourself and are so paralytic that the idea that taking a nap behind the back shed seems like a good idea if you can get there. Stumble, crawl or fall over where you stand, remove the plastic bladder from inside the box, scull the dregs of that fine claret (let’s not waste a drop, eh?) and muster all the breath you can and inflate the bladder to form a pillow. Now, all there is left to do is shove two fingers down your throat, blow chunks all over your shoes, then lie down and get a good night's sleep in comfort.
I find that if you only half-inflate the bag, it forms more of a ‘cradle’, and your head doesn’t slide off into the puddle of puke during the night. Let’s raise a pint of wine to Thomas Angove, a true national hero.
Illustration by Nick Marsh https://www.njgm.co.uk/
