Dating or drinking? What do Aussies prefer?

In a recent newspaper article, a single woman complained about the date drought in Australia. She'd just come home after a stint in the country that invented dating, the United States.

Perhaps urban planning is to blame, she wrote. “Australia has very few public spaces: other countries, those with a dating culture, design for community interaction and have public squares that make introductions easier.”

Or perhaps in Australia we’ve replaced a date with a drink. Or ten. Instead of a date, we have a 2am party pash. We have shagfests after the office Christmas party.

We have Bachelor and Spinster parties: bacchanalian binge drinking fests that end up with beer burps, bum flashings and utes bouncing up and down in a paddock somewhere in the Back of Bourke.

Think of The Secret Life of Us, which kicked off with Alex’s boozy bonk with her best friend’s husband. Or any Australian coming-of-age film and its obligatory drunken party scene that brings the main love interests together.

Perhaps it was always going to be this way. When the First Fleet arrived in Sydney, it’s said the convicts fell onto the beach, then onto the beer kegs, and then each other.

“It is beyond my abilities to give a just description of the scene of debauchery and riot that ensued," said a disgusted Arthur Bowes Smyth, surgeon aboard the Lady Penrhyn.

Nothing much has changed.

“We spent the first two weeks drinking,” says Scott, a 31-year-old share market analyst of his first dates with his now-fiancee.

Americans just get out more, making it easier to meet people, claims TV producer Caro. “There’s this 24-hour lifestyle that Australians don’t really subscribe to. Australians have to be enticed with special offers to go to the movies during the week.”

And then there’s the rise of hook-up culture – when work hours are long, and weekends are a mad rush of study and catch-ups with friends and family, no-strings attached sex offers instant, easy satisfaction.

But our desire for a date remains. A literary speed dating night organised by the Victorian State Library had a waiting list of 800 subscribers before uneasy senior managers pulled the plug.

“I met 30 guys in about two hours,” said one participant, a lawyer. And unmistakably Australian, she added: “I did require a few glasses of wine to get through it.”