I knew of them as throwdowns or grenades depending on the brand. grenades seemed to refer to VB only, bit not always.
when my parents arrived from the UK (melbourne late 70s) dad reckons the standard beer was a pony, and if you drank middies you were seen as a serious drinker (frame of reference - large professional engineering office). he did say that buying them by the ‘tray’ was pretty common as you’d spend more time walking to/from the bar than drinking them.
they then moved to the NT and it was bottles/cans all the way… and driving distance was measured in beers (eg: thats about a 4 beer drive).
i think schmiddys are an abomination… and schooners a very happy medium (at NSW prices, not melbournes 'lets charge pint prices for less beer).
The bloke who runs the bottlo bear mine says it’s a “two stubby walk to the MCG” which is amusing because I live approximately 600 metres from it so he must be a stallion of a drinker.
We’d never heard of throwdowns back in the '90’s in country VIC, but somehow word got through to us that they existed and it was a phone call order and an overnight run in the Student Union mini van to Canberra and the next Uni night was filled with throwdowns. We went through so many of them we got the local booze supplier to get them in as a regular line item when they saw how many we went through in one night.
Yeah dude, probably the greatest tasting food after bonking so hard!
All December it was a weekly tradition to go to Kiwi Fish and Chips at work after that visit.
