The Old Beer Hall

Australia's capital city of Canberra was founded in 1913 by excising land from New South Wales and calling it the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). The new federal government tried to enforce prohibition on itinerant workers who lived in tents while they built a garden city on a barren limestone plain. But as prohibition failed some years later in America, it failed in Canberra too. The new city's building workers and alcoholics went to any lengths to get beer. They'd walk, ride bicycles or hitch rides to get drunk across the ACT border in New South Wales. Absentees affected productivity. So the government ditched prohibition. It built a "wet" canteen to provide food and beer to stop its workers from getting drunk in New South Wales.