Sly-grog shop

In Australia, a sly-grog shop (or shanty) is an unlicensed hotel, liquor-store or other vendor of alcoholic beverages, sometimes with the added suggestion of selling poor-quality products. From the time of the First World War until as late as the 1960s (in Victoria and South Australia), much of Australia had early closing of hotels and pubs serving alcoholic beverages. The term is also used to denote illegal sales in Indigenous areas where alcohol has been banned or restricted.
The Australian slang term "sly grog" combines two older English slang terms:
The term "sly grog" evolved into general usage in Australia during the 1820s. An early reference comes from the Hobart Town Gazette of 18 March 1825: "We therefore felt convinced that in the sequel they would altogether decline applying for licenses, whilst many of them would become sly grog-men to the manifest injury of Government".
Sly-grog shops eventually expanded from their urban context and increased in numbers in rural areas during the period of progressive establishment of farms and pastoral runs in south-east Australia (generally distant from police and bureaucratic control). From the 1850s, cattle began to be replaced by sheep on the extensive pastoral runs along the inland rivers. Large numbers of workers were required to manage the sheep, particularly at shearing time. Sly-grog shops provided station-hands and shearers from the surrounding areas with a focus for entertainment, social interaction and drunkenness. There were few townships at that time, and law enforcement was over-stretched in these areas. In consequence, sly-grog shops (sometimes of the travelling variety) became an institution in these districts, often associated with particular pastoral runs or situated along mail-routes. As townships and police-stations became established and more numerous along the inland rivers in the latter half of the 19th century the sly-grog shops tended more often to be found on the back-blocks and regions further inland, following the squatters and their workers as they developed more marginal areas.
The following example from the Lower Murrumbidgee region of New South Wales is indicative of efforts carried out by police and magistrates in an attempt to thwart the sale of sly-grog. On 31 December 1869 Edward Harpur appeared before the Bench of Magistrates at the Hay Police Court, charged with "carrying spirits for the purpose of sale". Sergeant Macnamara had arrested Harpur along the Murrumbidgee River west of Hay "on the road to Mr. Severne’s station".
Extract from the article Our Social Position: Baneful Effects of Sly-grog Selling (1857):
In some areas, such as the ten islands of the Palm Island, Queensland which come under the administration of the Aboriginal Shire of Palm Island, alcohol sales are heavily restricted, and there are stiff penalties for sales of "sly grog". Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara in South Australia is another example where restrictions have been imposed in consultation with local Aboriginal elders, in order to combat alcohol abuse and alcohol-related crime.
• Tom came home that night from Bob O'Brien's, who kept a sly grog shop, quite tipsy. His poor wife shrank from him in sorrow, and his children crowded round their mother as if afraid of him. Alas! what wretchedness, what misery does this dreadful vice bring with it! [from ‘Susan’s Dream’, Tales for the Bush (1845) by Mary Theresa Vidal].
• She was a hard-looking woman – just the sort that might have kept a third-rate pub or a sly-grog shop. [from ‘The Blindness of One-eyed Bogan’ (1907) by Henry Lawson]
• Sad to relate Red Fred, for the first time in his life, found himself possessed of a class-conscious spirit. It had been all right to call each other Jimmy and Fred in the days when he was a shearer and the Chinaman used to visit the sheds with his hawker's cart which was really a travelling sly-grog shop. Things were different now. [from Chapter VI – The Big Wager, The Shearer's Colt (1936) by Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson].