The UniSA pub-crawl experience

Written by Kara Johnson

I’m a second year student, so I am a bit belated in immersing myself into the uni culture of the pub-crawl. Most uni students would undertake this rite of passage the first opportunity they got. Apparently the engineering pub-crawl is THE pub-crawl to attend.

I am not the type of person who is into pubbing/clubbing, and having transferred over from a degree that didn’t run a pub-crawl, I actually got a bit excited at the notion of drinking up with some friends and with people I’ve never seen in my life.

To me I think that most of the excitement actually came from “the shirt”. When ideas for the pub-crawl shirt were posted on Facebook I thought, “this is great, a touch of hilarity at the expense of ourselves”. I was actually bitterly disappointed when the official shirt design was released, it was not hilarious and half the people I asked about it had no idea what it even meant.

Even though I had my reservations about the shirt and the night in general, I continued to get myself excited about having a night out, away from the screen of a laptop doing mind-numbing assignments.

So the night came and lucky me, I had met some people that week who had invited me over for pre-drinks. After a drink and a bit of a chat we trotted off to the bus stop waiting for the bus to take us to the first destination, The Elephant. It was super crowded (we were 30mins late) and there was no music playing when we walked in, a disappointment in itself. Drinks were cheap and the bar staff were quick with service, a quintessential element to a pub-crawl, drinking lots and drinking it quickly!

The lateness and my lack of money at that moment meant I only got to have one drink before heading off to the next pub, The Austral. Now as a pub-crawl destination, it’s probably not ideal, the bar area is very narrow so it’s hard to get served when there’s 100 students lining up and only three bar staff, but they had music! We mainly danced for that next hour, had a couple cherry infused shots and probably made the non-pub-crawling patrons a bit nervous with our random/crazy/in-your-face dance moves.

The last destination I made it to was Shots. Having a heard a rumour along the way about $1 shots I got pretty excited, then was utterly disappointed when this was not true, so I stuck to the $5 vodkas that most of the destinations offered. Now some people may have hated Shots because it was a quiet bar (good for a pub-crawl as there were less patrons), but I LOVED it. There was a huge dance floor, adequate seating, and pool tables! Pool tables were definitely the big winner. As a destination for a pub-crawl, which is full of very diverse characters, this is one that I thought suited everyone’s needs.

I think most of the people stayed at Shots longer than the “cheap drink” time, dancing, playing pool, and having a chat. It definitely made some of the downfalls of the pub-crawl seem a lot better. Maybe even enough to get me to attend next year…