How Australians became the world’s biggest gamblers

A man sits at a poker machine in the gaming room at the Vikings Club in Canberra, Australia. Despite having less than half a percent of the world's population, Australia is home to a fifth of the world's slot machines. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

It is a quiet night in Fairfield, in Sydney’s western suburbs. Inside a small brick building, a dozen Gamblers Anonymous members help themselves to coffee, tea and miniature meat pies. The meeting is taking place in a suburb that has one of the city’s lowest median incomes, and highest levels of gambling losses. A fifth of the state of New South Wales’s 25 most profitable gaming clubs are here, according to government data.

One of these clubs, Fairfield Returned and Services League (RSL), is just a two-minute walk away. It is a building totally at odds with the modest apartment blocks and shabby train station nearby. A pedestrian walkway inside is lined with palms and ferns, it has an elaborate fountain, a grand lobby. It seems incongruous, that is, until you realise that its surroundings are its blood supply. Inside the club, just out of view of the street, are hundreds of gaming machines. Fairfield RSL and Clubs Australia did not respond to requests for comment.