The West End Brewery closure hit Adelaide like losing a familiar friend. Not because the beer was brilliant, but because it was ours.
For decades, that Thebarton chimney tower served as our unofficial scoreboard. Each year they’d paint the top in SANFL premiership colours (never enough black and gold for this Bays supporter). The Christmas display along the River Torrens drew families from across the suburbs. That free spring water tap let locals fill bottles whenever they wanted. West End sponsored teams, events, charities.
My paternal grandfather worked at the original Hindley Street brewery until they closed it down and moved everything to Thebarton. Now they’ve shuttered Thebarton too, sold the land for housing, shifted production interstate. The circle closes.
My latest song “Shout Your Mates Another Round” captures this without romanticising what we’ve lost. The central line says it plainly: “It wasn’t great, it wasn’t best, but it was ours.” Sometimes adequate things that belong to everyone matter more than superior things that belong to shareholders.
West End gave South Australia a shared reference point. Those long-neck, Pickaxe bottles around family tables weren’t about the liquid; they were about belonging to the same story with bottles made and owned in South Australia. Now we have boutique breweries and that is great but it means we have lost our common voice and focus of purchasing power, and that’s what a juggernaut needs to survive.
Adelaide keeps changing, as cities must. But each lost landmark risks making the place more generic, less itself. We’re allowed to mourn imperfect things that mattered to imperfect people who called this place home.
Shout Your Mates Another Round
Verse 1
I remember how the beer would flow
Around the family table, years ago
Those long neck bottles, that amber glass
It tints the memories, of my past
Verse 2
And then the brewery, standing proud
It was a feature, of our town
A place to gather, a place to cheer
A place where we made, local beer
Pre-chorus
But now it’s gone
Taken brick by brick
Like an empty glass
Drained sip by sip
It wasn’t great
It wasn’t best
But it was ours
From east to west
Chorus
Shout your mates another round
Pass that Pickaxe bottle down
Or sit alone and stare into that golden amber brown
Deep beneath that frothy crown
You can let your sadness drown
And fade away like all the landmarks they have taken from our town
Verse 3
I remember all the games we played
Interstate and here in Adelaide
How the West End money made our side
So we drank to them to show our pride
Verse 4
But now there is a lot of choice
So we no longer have one voice
That’s how things go, or so they say
But I still miss the best end of the day
Pre-chorus
‘Cause now it’s gone
Taken brick by brick
Like an empty glass
Drained sip by sip
It wasn’t great
It wasn’t best
But it was ours
From east to west
Chorus
Shout your mates another round
Pass that Pickaxe bottle down
Or sit alone and stare into that golden amber brown
Deep beneath that frothy crown
You can let your sadness drown
And fade away like all the landmarks they have taken from our town
Bridge
As I sit here, with my drink
And give myself, some time to think
As more simple pleasures disappear
There’s less and less left, to keep me here
Pre-chorus
‘Cause now it’s gone
Taken brick by brick
Like an empty glass
Drained sip by sip
It wasn’t great
It wasn’t best
But it was ours
From east to west
Final Chorus
Shout your mates another round
Pass that Pickaxe bottle down
Or sit alone and stare into that golden amber brown
Deep beneath that frothy crown
You can let your sadness drown
And fade away like all the landmarks they have taken from our town
Repeat final chorus
And Here Is The Song
You can hear this song across all streaming platforms, and right here.