Weird bets becoming normal
AUSTRALIANS love a punt.
Bookies put through about $350 million in bets during last year's Melbourne Cup with some mad buggers throwing down $30,000 on the nose.
Pop your head into any top Cairns watering hole with a good TAB and decent sized durry section this arvo and it will be thumping with old salts having a flutter.
Then have a squiz at the stats on pokies — about $370 million goes through the whiz-bang machines every day, some paying out, but a fair chunk staying in.
It’s the thrill of the chase, the blokey camaraderie, the nod-and-wink when you get a hot tip.
It is even the face-draining dread when your sure thing dies in the final moments and you realise baked beans are on the menu until payday.
All of it makes us feel more alive, even if it leads to malnutrition, scurvy and brittle bones.
As if the whopping spends were not evidence enough, Australians are now betting on sausages. First, some context. The country lost its mind this week when it emerged that Bunnings Warehouse had imposed a draconian rule forcing sausage sizzlers to put onion under the snag.
Amid the Asia-Pacific’s most important economic negotiations in years, embassy plans causing foreign policy disasters and the one-year anniversary of the marriage equality vote, it was onion placement that captured the country’s imagination and fury.
Ask any engineer and I’m sure they will tell you that under-the-snag is the go — structurally sound, good even spread, Buckley’s chance of a spill causing catastrophic injury to unsuspecting shoppers with wonky footing.
A chef might prefer on top, where their carefully julienne and caramelised bulbs are impeccably presented on a slice of wheat’s whitest atop a pork apple cider chipolata.
Then ask dad, the backyard barbecue bandit, who doesn’t really care because he is already half cut and has been splashing beer on the hotplate all arvo like an actual psychopath.
As long as it all comes out black as night and coats the gums in gritty charcoal, she’s sweet. Thanks dad. While the debate was fascinating, what really got my goitres groaning this week was one online betting agency’s instantaneous jump to attention.
The bookie placed Bunnings a $1.85 chance to overturn its onion ruling before the end of the year (a mug’s bet) and an outside $31-to-the-buck likelihood of banning the barbecue altogether.
Sausage rolls were tipped as its most likely replacement at $2.50, followed by meat pies ($3.30), bacon and egg rolls ($5.50), sushi ($10), falafel kebabs ($14), poke bowls ($31) and the absolute underdog, tofu sliders paying a massive $51.
There used to be a poster next to the urinals at Brothers Leagues Club that always attracted my attention.
It had two flies climbing a wall with a spiel along the lines of: “Australians will bet on anything. Are you betting on too much?”
It was supposed to make you have a good, hard look at yourself.
It just made me want to gamble on flies crawling up a wall.
These weird bets are becoming increasingly normal as bookies give out odds they know nobody would be dumb enough to take.
It’s a publicity thing, and I guess this plays into it, but it is still funny.
After the Opera House controversially advertised a horse race on its sails, bookies were paying out $1001 if adult website Pornhub became the next business erected on the iconic building.
Hard sell, that one.