The day Melbourne's free banquet turned into a food riot

It was one of those unseasonably hot November Melbourne days. Dry winds howled down from the north. The huge crowd that had gathered by the Yarra in Richmond was hungry, thirsty, restless, impatient. The ambitious event they'd all come to enjoy wasn't going at all to plan.

Thursday, November 28, 1867 – 150 years ago today – was meant to be a joyous celebration for the young city of Melbourne, a free banquet laid on for the citizens of the colony in honour of young Prince Alfred, Victoria and Albert's second son, on his first visit to our remote outpost of empire. It ended up as a bacchanalian free-for-all.

Many events had been organised to welcome the prince to Victoria that month, from firework displays to cricket matches, from triumphant marches to extravagant balls, but the idea of a huge "free feed" for everyday people had particularly captured the city's imagination.

The chosen location for the banquet was the stretch of land then known as the Zoological Gardens – or Richmond Paddock, or Police Paddock – on the northern bank of the Yarra River opposite the Botanic Gardens, today home to AAMI Park and Olympic Park. Here, it was felt, there would be enough space to accommodate the expected crowd of about 10,000.

It was intended to be an egalitarian affair. The organising committee described it as a "monster picnic, where all classes will assemble like members of one great family, and, without distinction, restriction or expense, partake together of the cheer which has been provided by the spontaneous liberality of loyal contributors".

For weeks before the banquet, Victorians inundated the committee with donations: brewers gave hogsheads of porter and ale (this was 20 years before the new-fangled "lager beer" became popular in Australia); huge boilers were pressed into service to brew an ocean of coffee; graziers pledged tonnes of flour and herds of cattle and sheep for an army of volunteer chefs to turn into mountains of bread and pies and chains of spit-roasts; butchers supplied 125 kilograms of German sausage, grocers 3.5 tonnes of potatoes; the Collingwood Volunteer Rifle Band and "the famous Wieland troupe of acrobats" offered to entertain the crowd.

And, at the heart of it all, was a "wine fountain", a 500-gallon (2270-litre) oak barrel, painted gaudy red and raised six metres above the crowd on a dais, with pipes running to a series of taps that would dispense colonial claret to the assembled multitude. The wine would start flowing after the prince had filled a ceremonial golden goblet and made a toast to his Mum, Queen Victoria.

That, at least, was the plan.

By noon it was clear that the crowd assembled to partake of the free feed was far bigger than anyone had predicted.

Some said 50,000 people travelled to be there, not just from the city but from all over the colony. Some put the figure as high as 80,000 – when the entire population of the colony was only 600,000. The Age called it "undoubtedly the largest assemblage of people there has ever been in Victoria".

The crowd encircled the Zoological Gardens, thronging behind a fence that separated them from serried ranks of long tables arranged all over the paddock, each table laden with pies and ox tongue and platters of oysters. The dry wind stirred up thick gritty dust, exacerbating everyone's thirst. But still, surprisingly, decorum prevailed even as the crowd swelled ever larger.

That all changed at 1pm, when permission was given to enter the enclosure.

"(The) fence at least a mile round at once became black with the thousands of people who were struggling over," The Age reported. "Through each open entrance people crushed madly and recklessly with the force of pent up waters that had suddenly found an outlet."

The thirsty crowd soon filled the paddock, but people continued to stream in. And the hot winds continued to blow.

The prince was due to arrive at 2pm, but by 3pm there was still no sign of him; it later eventuated that he had approached the gardens but had been advised not to enter for fear of his safety.

When the organisers announced that the guest of honour would not be appearing, decorum dissolved. The crowd descended on what food was left on the tables.

"Roughs and rowdies" ransacked the provisions tents and were seen skulking out from under the canvas with bottles of wine in their pockets. Others smashed open the heads of beer barrels, dipping bread into the ale and chucking the sopping loaves at one another. Still more pocketed what they couldn't eat, making off with cutlery and crockery.

Four or five revellers even managed to clamber up on the huge red cask feeding the fountain, handing out goblets of wine to their mates – who proceeded to throw it in one another's faces.

The Age primly refrained from sharing with its readers "one half of the scenes that occurred when the wild revelry of those who had debased themselves became a disgusting debauch", describing the situation as "such a saturnalia on a large scale as is not likely to have often occurred in the whole wide world over".

News of the free banquet soon spread. The Sydney Morning Herald – of course – crowed about the disgraceful behaviour, using the failure of the event as yet another excuse to bash the southern city.

"It must be remembered," the Herald scoffed, "that in Melbourne there is a large number of the vilest of the vile – the remnants of old convict systems – the gathering of old seditions, and of all those abominations which are heaped upon new countries."

But Melbourne's turn to take the moral high ground came a couple of months later, at yet another charity picnic, in Clontarf on Sydney's northern beaches, when Irish republican Henry O'Farrell attempted to assassinate the young prince by shooting him at close range.

Luckily, Alfred escaped with minor injuries, but the event led to a wave of anti-Irish outrage in the colony.

Melburnians might have got a bit hot and bothered – and riotously drunk – at our free banquet on that blustery day in 1867 but at least we didn't try to kill a prince.

Max Allen is wine and drinks columnist for the Australian Financial Review and is writing a book on the history of drinking in Australia.