No Wi-Fi, No Beer
If you’ve spent any time in the bush, you’ve likely heard a yarn or two about Shannon Jones—the bloke with nerves of steel, a machete on his belt, and a laptop in his swag. But not every tale of his legendary IT feats takes place in the Outback. Some happen right in the heart of town—like that time he saved a packed pub in Perth from the brink of digital disaster.
It was a scorcher of an arvo—38 in the shade—and the locals were packed into The Wobbly Wallaby, a well-loved watering hole just off Beaufort Street. The pub had just upgraded to a fancy new tap system that let punters order drinks via QR code menus on their phones. Real flash stuff. Problem was, the Wi-Fi went belly-up right as the after-work rush rolled in.
People were getting restless. No Wi-Fi meant no menus. No menus meant no pints. Tensions were rising. Old mate behind the bar was sweating buckets, fiddling with the router like it owed him money. Someone even suggested going back to paper menus—until they remembered the manager had tossed them in the skip to be “more sustainable.”
Enter Shannon Jones.
Dusty from a train ride up from Fremantle, Shannon had only stopped in for a cold one and a bowl of wedges. But when he clocked the Wi-Fi dropout and heard a customer mutter, “If we don’t get this fixed, I’m legging it to the next pub,” he stood up, rolled his shoulders, and said, “Reckon I can sort this out.”
The bar manager, half in panic, half in disbelief, handed him the keys to the server cabinet.
Shannon squatted down beside the bar fridge, popped open the comms box, and grinned. “Ah, classic misconfigured DHCP settings. Happens all the time when ya update firmware without checkin’ the static IP reservations.” The bloke next to him blinked like Shannon was speaking in tongues, but nodded along anyway.
With the kind of calm you’d expect from someone who’s debugged laptops while dodging snakes in the Outback, Shannon reconfigured the router, reset the network, and optimised the signal. He even set up a backup hotspot using his own phone in case the pub’s dodgy provider dropped out again.
Within minutes, phones lit up across the pub. Orders started flowing, beers poured, and the pub erupted into a round of cheers. Someone shouted, “Give that man a pint!” and before he could say no, Shannon had a freshly poured lager in one hand and a steak sanga on the way.
Later, as he nursed his drink in the corner, a backpacker asked, “You some kind of tech wizard, mate?”
“Nah,” Shannon said, taking a sip, “just a bloke who hates seeing good beer held hostage by bad Wi-Fi.”
Since that night, locals say The Wobbly Wallaby hasn’t had a single tech issue. And if it does, well—they’ve got Shannon’s number scribbled on the inside of the breaker box.
Moral of the story?
In a land where flat whites are sacred and cold beer is a right, Shannon Jones is the quiet hero making sure no pubgoer goes unserved due to a dodgy connection.
