At $7 per coffee twice daily, it’s no wonder young Australians can’t afford a home loan deposit | Peter Goers

The young endlessly complain that they’ll never afford a house but they are merrily drinking their deposits one $7 latte at a time, writes Peter Goers.

All my adult life my breakfast of champions has been black coffee, a cigarette and The Advertiser or Sunday Mail.

A very strong black coffee – so strong the spoon melts and I need the iron. I live on coffee and Coca-Cola. How stimulating.

High on a hill with a lonely goatherd, lay-ee-odl-lay-ee-odl-lay-he-ho…..and a lonely 9th Century Ethiopian goatherd called Kaldi noticed that his goats were stimulated by eating the berries of the coffee bush.

And so say all of us.

Bless that goatherd. Let’s also bless (though coffee snobs may curse) David Strang who invented instant coffee in Invercargill, NZ in 1890.

Bless coffee but it costs too much. Picture: iStock

We live in a cafe/coffee culture. Australia wears a cappuccino moustache. Lots of people order a “cup of chino”.

Cars have cup holders for coffee and bottled water (the symbols of our era) and some supermarket trolleys have cup holders.

The espresso martini is popular among the young who, apparently, will never afford a house.

Coffee snobs will be appalled that the price of coffee beans is set to rise (what isn’t?) and a cup of coffee, lovingly extruded by a barista, will cost $7. Yikes!

Cafes need our support but the $7 coffee will be difficult to swallow.

Tea was once ubiquitous in Oz and coffee was less common.

Tea was the universal panacea. Everything began and ended with a cup of tea and you had the choice of Bushell’s or Amgoorie.

Coffee was black or white and instant or instant. International Roast ruled and a big treat was Nescafe or Maxwell House or the sheer, heady luxury of Moccona. International Roast was deluxe compared with Caterer’s Blend or the dreaded Pablo Coffee.

In the 70s, we drank milk coffee – International Roast spooned into a brown coffee pot (everything in the 70s was brown or orange) of hot milk but this was only served to guests we were desperate to impress.

Whatever happened to brewed coffee or the glorious Vienna coffee which was served in a long glass with lashings of cream atop.

Nowadays there’s a ridiculous variety of coffee.

You can, and do, get a free trade, skinny frappuccino with a hazelnut twist and imported textured oat milk or a choc mint skinny soy latte but no Vienna coffee.

I can never make those George Clooney promoted coffee pod machines work and the pods are environmentally suspect and domestic espresso machines are clumsy, noisy and difficult to operate.

Those George Clooney-spruiked coffee pods may have been a bad idea in hindsight. Picture: Screenshot

We all love a bonza barista tamping down their coffee grounds or swiftly wiping their milk spigot.

The young, particularly, are addicted to cafe coffee and will happily line up twice daily for their fix at $7 a go.

That’s $5,100 a year or $51,000 for ten tears. That’s a big chunk of house deposit.

The young endlessly complain that they’ll never afford a house but they are merrily drinking one in cardboard cups.

Drink instant coffee like South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas and me.

A 500g tin of Nescafe is often on special for $16 and that tin will give you 90 strong cups of coffee at 17.7 cents each.

Drink instant coffee and afford a house.

I do like a double espresso of an afternoon from those marvellous Italian stove top percolators – the best invention since coffee.

Cafe culture is affluenza and foolish folk will pay a fortune for coffee from beans defecated by a civet cat. To coffee snobs I say, “don’t wake up and smell the coffee” unless it’s instant but this will fall on deaf ears because posh coffee is always better latte than never.

HOT/NOT/VALE

HOT

Steak sandwich at the Peterborough Rodeo.

Adelaide’s new/old suburb Southwark

The new swimming pool at Ernabella.

NOT

Online shopping from Temu is grand but the flurry of daily emails ain’t.

The term “reaching out”.

Politicians who defect midterm from the parties they were elected for.

VALE

Leonie Osborn a great lady of Adelaide theatre.

Originally published as At $7 per coffee twice daily, it’s no wonder young Australians can’t afford a home loan deposit | Peter Goers