The booze we were forced to drink or hide.
On Cape York there are a number of Aborigine settlements and in all of them there are alcohol restrictions. The entire area north of the Jardine River is all Aboriginal land so we hid the rest of our alcohol behind a tree on the side of the road near the turnoff to Varilya Point.
The restriction system is just silly.
First, in order to keep the Aborigines from drinking too much they’ve instituted this law which effectively causes everyone traveling north to drink too much so that they don’t end up wasting their booze. That’s called irony.
Second, in the areas like Lockhart River Community where there is zero alcohol allowed, the Aborigines just drive 100km to the Archer River Roadhouse once a month when their government checks come, get hammered, and then drive drunk 100km back to the settlement in the middle of the night. They do that for three or four nights until they’ve all run out of money and then the area is quiet again.
Third, in a place like Bamaga, you can just go to the bottleshop and BUY MORE BOOZE.
This is not, in my book, a system that works.
