But the mood soon soured as they hooked into a bottle of scotch on the evening of June 24 and the man started complaining about the state of the woman’s house and her animals.

The argument became louder and more aggressive until the woman pushed the man onto the couch.

He responded by standing up, pushing the woman onto a lounge chair and punching her in the face about five times.

“The victim sustained a cut to her top lip, with blood visible around her lips,” said agreed police facts tendered to Wagga Local Court this week.

“The victim was crying hysterically and unable to talk to police for about 20 minutes until she was able to calm herself down.”

But that was not the end of the violence.

On July 11, the man turned up at the woman’s house with a cask of wine and began drinking around her in defiance of a court-imposed apprehended violence order (AVO).

According to police, the man drank three litres of wine before the woman took the cask off him.

He looked at her television and said: “Like TV do ya?” and then smashed the screen with his foot.

He slammed his hands down on the woman’s laptop computer on a coffee table and broke both.

Then he slapped her in the face five times.

The man left Wagga but was arrested on the north coast on July 29 and has been in custody since then.

The man’s solicitor, David Barron, said his client could not remember wither incident because he was drunk, but accepted the version of events in the agreed facts.

Magistrate Michael Crompton said there was no alternative to imposing a full-time custodial sentence after the man pleaded guilty to two counts of assault, three counts of destroying or damaging property and one count of contravening an AVO. He gave the man a head sentence of nine months, with five months’ non-parole, backdated to July 29.