Mercury snapper Anna Warr thought another new vaccination hub had opened in Wollongong when she stumbled upon hundreds of people waiting in line outside The Illawarra Hotel.
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But on closer inspection Warr saw those in the crowd were carrying vessel-like objects.
They were doing so after a call out from Illawarra Hotel publicans Nikki and Ryan Aitchison, urging people to drop by on Saturday to purchase heavily-discounted beer.
The one proviso being that people had to bring their own "interesting vessels" to carry the beer home.
At $10 a litre this wasn't an issue, with one punter opting to store the beer she bought in an Esky.
Nikki Aitchison said the idea to sell the beer on Saturday came after lockdown was extended a further four weeks.
"We didn't think lockdown was going to go so long. We've been keeping an eye on our stock and as the weeks of lockdown go by, most of our stock only had three or four weeks of use-by date left so we decided to have this event," she said.
"If we held onto the stock we were looking at losing $10-$15,000, which we can't afford to do right now, so we just thought we'd just discount it drastically and open the doors and everyone has got to bring an exciting vessel and walk out with a few litres of beer."
Mrs Aitchison said she was blown away by the support.
"We've had a blender, we've had a kettle, which was awesome...someone just came in with a big pasta pot, so they are going to use a ladle to get their beer......it's just a bit of fun when times are looking so grim for us," she said.
"We started at 2pm and the line is still all the way down the road. We hope to be here until 7pm or until we sell out."
The publicans were hoping to sell 60 kegs of beer which had about 50 litres each in them.
Illawarra Hotel regular Tim Walker said he was happy to do his bit to help out.
"We're locals, we want to help out our local pub. They call, we come...plus they serve great beer here," Mr Walker said.
Mrs Aitchison said all beers including boutique and house beers were sold at the discounted price of $10 a litre.
"We've already also sold about 600 to 700 beer cans at $1 a pop," she said.
"It's been a great day and we really appreciate everyone's support."
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Agron Latifi
Wollongong born and bred. I love reporting about the Illawarra region and have been doing it for more than 20 years. I've moved into sport recently after covering the education round for the last five plus years for the Illawarra Mercury. It's been a great pleasure.
Wollongong born and bred. I love reporting about the Illawarra region and have been doing it for more than 20 years. I've moved into sport recently after covering the education round for the last five plus years for the Illawarra Mercury. It's been a great pleasure.
