Region & History

Where is the cradle of Australian craft beer? Many point to Fremantle, the port at the mouth of the Swan River south of Perth. There, the Sail and Anchor, a brewpub (a venue with its own brewery), is regarded as the place that sparked the movement. The Swan River Colony was founded in 1829, more than 3,000 kilometers from Sydney.

The colony's first major beer came from the Swan Brewery. Frederick Sherwood founded it in Perth in 1857; after his death in 1874, it moved to Mounts Bay, and in 1888 the company, now run as a joint-stock enterprise, took over a rival brewery. Brewing continued at Mounts Bay until 1966, after which it shifted to the Emu Brewery on Spring Street in the city centre, and from 1978 to Canning Vale, an industrial area south of Perth.

Then the ownership changed hands. In 1981, Alan Bond's Bond Corporation bought the brewery for 164 million Australian dollars; in 1990, New Zealand's Lion Nathan took over the Bond Group's breweries, and since 2009 Lion Nathan has belonged to the Japanese conglomerate Kirin. In October 2012, Lion Nathan decided to close Canning Vale by March 2013. Swan and Emu have since been brewed elsewhere, first in Adelaide, and since 2021 in New South Wales.

Fremantle offered the counter-model. Howard Cearns, Nic Trimboli and Phil Sexton, formerly of the Matilda Bay Brewery, opened the Little Creatures Brewery in November 2000 in a former crocodile farm. The building had originally been built for the Kookaburra yachts that raced the 1987 America's Cup off Fremantle. Today the brand belongs to Lion, and Lion belongs to Kirin.

Feral Brewing from the Swan Valley also changed hands. In 2017, Coca-Cola Amatil bought the brewery; in 2021 Amatil merged into Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, and in May 2024 CCEP sold Feral to an alliance of Western Australian brewers and investors. No Western Australian beer appears in the EU register.