I won a meat tray at the Bangalow pub the other night and I still haven’t got over the surprise of winning a raffle of any description for the first time in my life, especially one so etched in Australian folklore.

It was a genuine thrill to take home the neatly packaged and displayed porterhouse steak, pork chops and sausages, easily $30 worth of meat, which had only cost two $5 raffle tickets and four rounds of drinks. Winning is such a buzz.

Knowing her extraordinary success in such matters, I couldn’t wait to phone the good news to my eldest daughter. “Great,” she said. “So you’re only $70 or $80 down on the evening.”

Because life happens that way, the reason she has such good luck with meat raffles is that she’s a serious vegetarian. She either sells the meat trays to other customers or exchanges them for boxes of mangoes or vegetables.

“What was in your winning tray, anyway?” she asked. I told her. “Oh, really?” she said airily. The ones at her Bondi club were magnificent offerings which included a leg of lamb, filet steak, a dozen eggs, bacon, chicken breast filets, and French cutlets with those cute paper frills. Probably other delicacies, too, but I was tuning out. She was sounding more and more like a carnivore by the minute, and the gloss was fast fading from my victory.

The famous alternative to the meat tray is of course the chook raffle, also etched in national folklore, but always scornfully, as in: “He couldn’t organise a chook raffle in a pub!”

Clearly, some pubs and clubs have more imaginative prizes than others. When I was a cub reporter in the West Australian’s Fremantle office in bygone days, the Friday night raffle prize at the legendary Railway Hotel in North Fremantle used to be either three bloody lumps of rump, four longnecks of Emu Bitter, or a haircut. The haircut was performed by a buxom, skimpily-dressed barmaid, for whom hairdressing was far from a natural skill.

Although the customers were thirsty and hungry wharfies and seamen, many winners, perhaps unsurprisingly, chose the haircut. Even though their heads smelled of raw meat afterwards.

Sometimes Australian pub raffles make the news. My favourite meat-tray news item concerned pork chops and two erstwhile friends drinking in a Sydney suburban pub, the Jannali Inn, a few years ago.

This is one of those “Makes You Proud to be an Australian” stories. On winning the meat tray raffle, and with 15 schooners under his belt, Ross Lucock, a 31-year-old shop-fitter, was barred from buying more beers because he wasn’t wearing shoes. So he strapped pork chops on his feet.

His friend Troy Bowron, 25, was playing pool nearby. He joined in the general merriment at his mate’s pork-chop sandals, and the pieces of pork that were being thrown around the room, but then slipped on the greasy floor, breaking his left arm and putting an end to his career in upholstery.

The District Court ordered the hotel to pay Mr Bowron damages of $61,515 for failing to clean up the mess. But Mr Lucock, whom Mr Bowron also sued, got off scot-free after the judge found he hadn’t breached any duty of care to his friend. Mr Bowron was ordered to pay the pork-shod drinker’s legal costs.

The court blamed the pub for continuing to serve alcohol to Mr Lucock, who said he could remember virtually nothing of his meaty antics. He agreed his 15-year friendship with Mr Bowron had been “strained” by the court case. However, he hadn’t been put off meat raffles. “In future I’ll just cook it, I won’t wear it.”

My friend Michael has good reason to detest the Friday night meat raffle. He was drinking in a Byron Bay hotel a few years ago when the weekly raffle was being conducted – in this case a fish raffle, with the prize a big frozen snapper.

He was a mere bystander at the bar when an argument broke out between an unsuccessful ticket buyer and the raffle organiser. The unlucky punter was complaining that the prize had gone to the organiser’s brother. (Oh, no, in the long and noble history of pub raffles, how could such a thing ever happen?)

Anyway, the loser picked up the fish, swung it at the organiser, missed him (the frozen fish was surprisingly heavy, like a club), and struck my friend across his left ear.

Michael has been deaf in that ear ever since. He doesn’t go to pubs, or even drink alcohol, any more.
I’m not entirely put off though. After all, I’ve tasted victory.

Robert Drewe’s latest books, The Local Wildlife and Swimming to the Moon, are now available.

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