Damien Warde sentenced over ‘spur of the moment’ Airlie Beach beer keg theft

An Irishman’s attempt to steal a keg of beer during a night out in Airlie Beach was ‘impressive he could even lift the keg, especially a full one’.

An Irishman will pay $400 in fines for an ill-fated attempt to steal a full keg of beer during a drunken night out in Airlie Beach.

Cairns-based carpenter Damien Warde teamed up with a male backpacker he had just met to steal the keg of Great Northern beer from Magnums Bar on June 26, in a heist Proserpine Magistrates Court agreed was “bound to fail”.

The court heard on Monday Warde, 35, acted as the lookout at the end of an alleyway outside the bar, before helping the other man, who had been staying at the same backpackers’ hostel that weekend, load the keg onto a shopping trolley about 10.20pm.

Police prosecutor Sergeant Jay Merchant told the court the two men then pushed the trolley down the main street to the Airlie Beach Lagoon, where they used a torch to try to find a way to open the keg, before giving up and dumping it in some bushes.

Sgt Merchant said CCTV cameras and security guards witnessed the entire incident, and Warde was arrested outside Paddy’s Shenanigans Irish Bar later that night.

Warde initially denied all involvement and tried to pin the crime on the other man, but in court this week pleaded guilty to one charge of stealing.

Handing down his sentence on Monday, Acting Magistrate Athol Kennedy said he had never heard such a silly example of stealing.

Cairns man Damien Warde appeared at Proserpine Magistrates Court on July 26 2021 pleading guilty to one charge of stealing and one charge of failure to appear. Picture: Kirra Grimes

Mr Kennedy disagreed with Sgt Merchant’s description of the theft as “calculated”, siding instead with Warde’s solicitor Peta Vernon who argued it was “certainly not well thought out”.

“I’ve been a solicitor and a magistrate for a long time and I’ve never heard of anyone stealing a keg of beer and putting it in a Woolworths trolley and going down the main street,” Mr Kennedy said.

“He was bound to get caught.”

Warde himself told the court he had been on a four-day break from his current employment on roadworks at Bowen and had been drinking “quite a lot of beer, and cocktails, and everything” in the lead up to the theft.

The Irish citizen, who has lived in Australia for 14 years without appearing in court, described the incident as a “spur of the moment kind of thing”.

“We didn’t go out of our way to steal something, we were walking home when we’ve seen it,” Warde said.

Mr Kennedy decided not to record convictions, but told Warde: “Please don’t drink so much that you can’t control what you do.”