The “six o’clock swill” is one of the best known terms in Australian history. It captures the unedifying drinking habits of a 50-year period from the first world war until the 1960s, when hotel bars closed at 6pm in the south-eastern states of Australia.
Six o’clock closing legislation was impelled by wartime patriotism and austerity, and a temperance mood which aimed for the prohibition of alcohol.
