Beer truck crashes into river documentary

[Lebowski]

I remember a while ago I saw a documentary about a small country town where a truck full of beer crashed and fell into the river. The locals were all in the river collecting what they could carry and filling up their cars. Anyone happent to know what it was called? or where I could find some info on it?

[Evo]

Yeah. It was called Murbah Swamp Beer. What a great doco. It was an entry into 2002 Tropfest.

Apparently a semi carrying a literal truckload of beer crashed on the Pacific Highway in Murwillubah and rolled into a river. They couldn't pull the truck out of the river with the load on cause it was too heavy and they had to move it pronto cause of Christmas traffic, so they cut all the lines and let the beer go into the river. The rest is the story of all the locals diving into the river and "salvaging" all the beers and the ensuing parties that went on in the town. It's a real bloody feel good movie.

I've got it on the 2002 Tropfest dvd. It got my vote.

[Oliver]

Sounds great.

Here's some info from imdb

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318468/

Oliver

[Evo]

Oh, there you go. Easter, not Christmas.

And apparently the name - Murbah Swamp Beer came from the "locals version" of the acronym on the bottle tops of Malt Shovel Brewery beers. It really is a great doco. It shows how a town can pull together for a common cause. Wish I could post a version of it on the web, but that would be illegal.

[gregb]

I recall reading about that in the paper, didn't the local fuzz have a problem because head office phoned them and told them to stop the locals from doing this as the beer was still the property of the brewery, but all the boys in blue had been leading the charge into the river?

Wish I'd been there...

Greg.

[Dogger Dan]

About two years ago I was driving in to work. If anyone looks at a map they will find Lucan is on the way to Grand Bend, which is summer resort town, from London. The Booze warehouse is in London and the booze gets consumed at the Bend so somehow it gets shipped, normally by transport truck.

Ok, so back to the drive into work, on my way, the fire department and police blew past me. As I got further down the road at a small intersection called Elginfield, a transport had gone off the road into a guys front yard which included a pond. Suffice it to say the load was dumped all over the yard and yes it was the booze going to the Bend. The police and Fire Dep. were there and I was abruptly discouraged from helping collect the bottles. When I suggested I would take them up to the Bend for them, the guns came out and I was encouraged to get on my way to work. It just shows to go ya that people in authority have no sense of humour

Any way I had noticed a corner of a box sticking its nose out of the pond and thought better to keep my mouth shut seeing everyone there with guns were already somewhat upset and believed they knew more than anyone else, truely a bad combination here.

On my way home from work that evening, I stopped to peruse the total damage and I mean it was huge, the booze was gone but this truck was still sprawled over the guys yard with some great big rents into the sod and chewed up ashphalt where the driveway used to be. The property owner was looking grim and we got into a conversation. Being who I am there are always a couple of pints in the trunk and as we were quaffing them, the owner was saying he didn't get a single bottle for all his trouble and efforts and that the truckers insurance was dinking him already over fixing the damage. I gazed into the filthy pond with 2 inch visability and I spied the corner of the box that I had seen that morning. Further investigation, some rolled up pants and a wet pair of shoes, netted us 10 bottles of rum. (2 didn't survive the crash).

Of course, we gave them back to the rightful owners, and no one ever wanted to do a flick about it either

Dogger

[r.magnay]

We had a full road train of Coopers pale ale go arse up in the local sewer farm here in Alice, because Coopers is such good beer, they decided rather than waste it, they just pumped the sewer pond dry and rebottled it as VB!!! Funny but some people commented how much VB had improved!