Goon!

The most important thing I'm going to tell you about, and the main theme of this blog, is goon. Goon is a 4 litre boxed wine and extremely cheap- around 9 to 15 dollars for the entire carton. You'll see it everywhere you go; forget Ayers Rock, forget the Kangaroo, forget Kylie's backside, Goon is in my opinion the national emblem of Australia.



The great thing about it is it has two purposes 1. to get you wasted and 2. once you're wasted you can use it as a pillow to rest your weary head. Goon is perhaps the most disgusting wine you'll ever taste, and suspiciously says on the box 'may contain fish and egg products'. One question I want asnwering is how the hell do you get fish and eggs in wine? And what kind of fish? I can just imagine someone at a wine tasting table, uttering "Hmmm...yes....well I get an aroma of tuna in this one." Apparently it's something to do with the refining process, and I would love to go on a goon wine tour to find out how they make it. Another piece of advice- only buy the 'soft fruity lexia' and NEVER buy the red goon. You see, goon should only be drunk in one way, and that's by taking the bag out of the box, lying on your back and somebody feeding you goon shots. And red goon is going to stain. Everywhere you go in Oz you'll see people with a bag of goon in their hand.

Even better is the number of games you can play with it; you can play Goon of Fortune where you hang the bag from a rotating washing line and whoever it lands on has to drink. Then there's a game you can play with the box, where you have to pick the box up off the ground using only your mouth, and then you keep ripping strips off the box untill everyone's out. My first encounter with goon was when I was staying at Surfside hostel on Bondi Beach. A Canadian only known as "the goon man" would literally walk around forcing people to take goon shots. And if you didn't he would follow you around untill you did. I had many a fun time kicking the bag around in a game of goon football. It's the best piece of advice I can give you in Australia because it's going to save you a hell of a lot of money.