Food and drink in the city

What colonial Australians ate 

ROSETTA STABLER respectfully acquaints the Public that she prepares Boiled Mutton and Broths every day at 12 o’clock, and a joint of Meat Roasted always ready at One, which, from its quality and mode of serving, she flatters herself will attract the Notice of the Public. Visitors from remote Settlements, Mariners, &c will find a convenient Accommodation at a moderate expence, and every exertion will be made to render satisfaction.

—The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 26 June 1803, 4.

S. T. Gill: Ticket to the First Subscription Ball, Ballarat, 1854.

In 1817, Sydney had 52 licensed liquor outlets, Parramatta had 12, Windsor had 4 and Liverpool 3, while Castlereagh had just one, Charles Hadley’s ‘First and Last’. Two brewing licences went to Sydney, and one to Parramatta.

And all Persons, other than those mentioned in the foregoing List as duly qualified and licensed, are strictly prohibited from vending Wine, Spirits, or Beer, or the Brewing of Beer, on Pain of being prosecuted and fined, according to the Colonial Regulations.
— The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 19 April 1817, 1, http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/2177180

Figures are hard to come by, but in 1859, Frank Fowler said there were no less than five hundred public-houses in Sydney and its immediate neighbourhood, while in 1883, Richard Twopeny said that Melbourne had 1120. [i]

There was no shortage of legitimate liquor sellers in the cities: Gerstäcker noticed this on landing in Sydney in 1851, just before gold fever began. He saw many “dram-shops”.

I was struck by the immense number of dram-shops in the streets;  in Pitt-street and many other places they stand house on house, and nearly every corner is sure to be a grog-shop, with the government license upon it to sell spirituous and fermented liquors; and drunken men and women you meet nearly every where. I have really never been in any place yet where I saw so many drunkards as in Sydney, and, more disgusting still, drunken women.
 — Friedrich Gerstäcker, Narrative of a Journey Around the World, 388 – 9.

In the days of the gold rush, William Kelly noted the same ‘corner effect’ in Melbourne, where such premises invited both streets equally, and the equality went further:

The bars were always full, the tap-rooms always crowded, and in those resorts, at least, there was no disproportion of the sexes. The women were as numerous as the men, and asserted the equality of their gentle genders by as deep potations, and as blasphemous and obscene vociferations, as their rougher associates.
— William Kelly, Life in Victoria or Victoria in 1853, and Victoria in 1858, vol 1, 50.

Less is said about places where meals might be served, but they must have been there, because as we shall see in chapter 15, there were many food places on country roads. Friedrich Gerstäcker certainly saw food being sold in Sydney:

Bread and vegetable-carts meet your eye wherever you look, light milk-carts rattle through the streets early in the morning, and their bells summon the housemaids to the door. “Hot pies, penny a-piece,” are loudly offered, nearly at every street corner, fishmongers drag their hand-trucks through the crowd, and fruit-stalls, with oranges and apples, are every where to be seen at this season of the year.
— Friedrich Gerstäcker, Narrative of a Journey Around the World, 388.

There were certainly prawns to be had, sixpence a pint in Sydney, a shilling in Melbourne, though not always at the most convenient of times. In Sydney,

They are brought to the former place by the Hunter river steamers, and as these boats generally arrive late at night it is not unusual to be awakened from your sleep at one or two in the morning by a fellow shouting “Fine fresh Prawns” just under your window. If the musquitoes are about it is as well to buy some of these prawns, and sit at the window and eat them for amusement.
— Frank Fowler, Southern Lights, 1859.

---

[i] Richard Twopeny, Town Life in Australia, ‘A walk around Melbourne’.

Those magnificent men (and women) in their flying machines

Those magnificent men (and women) in their flying machines 

After the end of World War I, Australia had plenty of adventurous young men who had learnt to fly an aeroplane during the war. Before long, a few Australian women started to join them and learn those same skills.

People thinking about World War I think mostly of the Western Front, but a lot of Australians served in the Light Horse around Palestine, and because riding a plane is like riding a horse, some of them transferred to the Australian Flying Corps. (The proof is found in odd places: in the cavalry, majors and lieutenant-colonels are squadron leaders and wing commanders: think about it!)

Anyhow, many young Australian men moved from riding over the deserts to riding above them. Coming from a land where distance is the great enemy, young men flying over vast distances in the Middle East would naturally think of shortening similar distances at home, using aircraft. In the earliest days, the way to make people aware of aviation was to conduct races, but first, the aviators needed explorers to show them the way

In August and September of 1919, Paul McGinness and Hudson Fysh surveyed part of an official air race route from Katherine (Northern Territory) to Longreach (Queensland). They did this from the ground, driving a Model T Ford, and part of their role was identifying places where landings could be made, and ensuring adequate fuel supplies.

Prime Minister Billy Hughes had arranged a prize of £10,000 for the first Australians to fly an aircraft from England to Australia, around 13,500 km, but to win, they had to do it in less than 30 days. The winners were two brothers, Captain Ross Smith (RAF), Lieutenant Keith Smith (AFC) and two sergeants, Shiers and Bennett. The Smiths were knighted, and the sergeants were both made air force officers for their efforts.

Other Australians were blocked from competing, because the race was held under the rules of the Royal Aero Club in Britain. Bert Hinkler had been flying with the Royal Naval Air Service, and wanted to fly alone. The Aero Club decided that was too unsafe. Charles Kingsford-Smith (ex-RAF) had a team of four, but they could not take part because none of them was a good navigator. Back then, many pilots navigated by following roads, rivers or railway lines, but for long distances, especially over sea, somebody on the plane had to be able to navigate by taking sightings on the stars or the sun.

The Smiths and their two sergeants made it to Darwin on December 10, 1919, in just over 27 days. Bert Hinkler saved his money and bought an Avro Avian aeroplane, completing the same route, making it to Darwin in 1928, in just 15½ days.

Charles Kingsford-Smith wanted to fly a plane across the Pacific, and teamed up with another Australian, Charles Ulm. Trying to attract sponsors, they set a record for flying around Australia, taking 10 days 5½ hours in 1927. Stunts and publicity meant everything to the aviators — and aviatrixes, as people called the women pilots.

By 1934, when another London-Melbourne air race was being planned, several women were likely starters, though 19-year-old Nancy Bird (later Nancy Bird Walton) was thought to be less likely to start, because she lacked experience.

In the late 1980s, I took a pioneer Australian aviator, Lores Bonney, on a night visit around the museum I worked in. Her family told me she was past it, as blind as a bat and as deaf as a post, but after a battle of wills, I persuaded her into the wheelchair, declared myself her servant, and we took off, at her imperious directions.

She was a proud old lady, and only agreed to ride in a wheelchair so I could show her more. It was strenuous (I was wearing a dinner suit), but I knew a bit about her and wanted to get more. She was one of our last explorer-adventurers, flying around Australia in 1932, and many other triumphs. In spite of what her family said, she could see Meissen porcelain at 20 metres, she heard and responded to my whispers, and gave me details on how early aviators prepared a new route.

They were very much explorers, and she even researched bush tucker before flying around Australia. In fact, she did what the more effective explorers did. She went out and learned from Aborigines about bush tucker, because she knew she would need it if her plane failed.

She told me also why she flew as “Mrs. Harry Bonney”: she could not have children, and wanted to make her husband’s name live on. While she mentioned that her wealthy husband bought her aircraft for her, she did not tell me that her cousin, Bert Hinkler, had taken her up for her first flight. I found that out later, and I also found these details of her round-Australia flight:

Mrs. Harry Bonney, of Brisbane, who is but comparatively young in the aeronautical world, having completed two years' of flying experience this month, and who is now on a round-Australia solo flight, passed through Longreach on Tuesday morning, arriving at 9.40 a.m. from Blackall … Mrs. Bonney has already two creditable flight to her credit, having flown from Brisbane to Bundaberg and back in a day, whilst in December of last year she flew from Brisbane to Wangaratta. She is using the same Gipsy Moth on the present flight, and which bears a silver plate inscribed with Flight-Lieut. Hill's signature. The machine was used by him on his flight to Australia.
— The Longreach Leader (Qld), 20 August 1932, 15, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/37232026

Flying towards Longreach, she noticed a leaking petrol pump, and put down at a homestead, only to find that it was deserted. Fortunately, the plane had landed in a good open stretch and, after placing her handkerchief on a mimosa bush for wind directions, got off safely and flew to Macfarlane homestead proper where assistance was given by Mr. Doyle. In landing there she used a windmill for wind direction…

She states she was about early next morning, in preparation for the run [from Blackall] to Longreach and Cloncurry, but … preparatory to taking off, a flock of galahs flew across her path, and alighted in front of the plane. In her own words … it was a pretty sight, but just too nerve-racking at that particular moment, so she roared the engine and frightened them away…

Her approach to Longreach was unostentatious, probably no one outside the Press, the Shell Company representatives, and Qantas, realising that she had arrived and departed. The aviatrix, who had been flying by compass course, struck the Central Western railroad at Ilfracombe, which, by the way, she mistook for Longreach, but her observant eye picked up the line of steel, which she followed, to eventually land on Qantas aerodrome.
— The Longreach Leader (Qld), 20 August 1932, 15, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/37232026

When she flew solo from Brisbane to London in 1938, she landed and was photographed, perched on the edge of the cockpit, looking down her nose at something, and this photograph can be seen if you use a search engine for images of Lores Bonney. I told her she looked a bit annoyed.

We had stopped so I could take a rest, and for once, I was facing her as I sat on a seat. Her eyes twinkled as she replied in cut-glass accents: “Of course I was annoyed! The man asked me where I was from, and I was thinking, you silly little man, don’t you know that VH on the fuselage means Australia?”

Oral history can conserve what would otherwise be lost, but the history gatherer must know how to ‘oral’ in just the right way. I feel that if I, too, had not been using my best cut-glass accent, I might never have winkled out those matters.

How colonial Australians travelled

Tom Roberts, Bailed Up.

There were plenty of coaches after the 1820s, as Friedrich Gerstäcker was aware in the 1850s. Wanting to travel across country from Sydney to Adelaide, even though he had walked in America from the Niagara to Texas, he felt he had done enough walking, and there was a drought that ruled out going by horseback, because the cost of horse feed was then so high,

…and therefore, following the advice of some gentlemen in Sydney, I went with the mail-coach to Albury, a little town on the banks of the Hume, to see if I should be able to get a canoe there, or, if not, make one myself, and try the river.
— Friedrich Gerstäcker, Narrative of a Journey Around the World, 398.

Private contractors carried people, goods and the mail, and the government cared only about the mails. The way passengers were treated, he said, was “a sin to humanity”. The journey began in a grossly overcrowded coach, which was replaced by a wagon (and rain), and then a two-wheeled cart. One passenger sat beside the coachman, the other two faced backwards, losing their hats to low branches, and in fear of being thrown off on uphill sections.

Gerstäcker mentioned that one cart was marked “licensed to carry nine persons”. He said no sober magistrate could get nine people into it, but he could explain the licence:

The mail contractors, who make an enormous profit by the business, invite the magistrate, whenever there is another wagon to be inspected, to a good breakfast, and there these worthy members of Themis sit till they are thought in a fit state for the occasion—that is, to see the wagon double—when he is perfectly right in licensing the cart for the accommodation of nine passengers, and calling the thing a “royal mail.”
— Friedrich Gerstäcker, Narrative of a Journey Around the World, 406 – 407.

From there, he headed for Albury, which had:

… a court-house, a ferry-boat, five taverns, and—a great improvement in the rising civilization of the interior of Australia—a steam-mill, set up by an enterprising English gentleman, a Mr. Heaver. There are also three stores, a white and blacksmith, carpenter, and other tradesmen in the little place.
— Friedrich Gerstäcker, Narrative of a Journey Around the World, 408.

For now, we will leave him by the river, hewing a dug-out canoe (he was the first to voyage down the Murray), until later in this chapter. Instead, let us turn now to Thomas M’Combie, who went by Cobb and Co., from Geelong to Ballarat.

As he describes it, he went to the booking office of Cobb’s line and got a ticket for the morning coach, explaining that Cobb was an American who had returned long ago to his native country, having started a service from Melbourne to Castlemaine, after the gold discoveries. Cobb had imported the best American coaches, won all the customers, then “he sold out, and retired with a moderate fortune”.

At five minutes to six the coach, drawn by six grey horses, drew up before the office of Cobb and Co., Malop Street. In a few seconds the whole fifteen seats were occupied; the clerk examined each passenger’s ticket, which apparently was satisfactory. Six o’clock, chimed, and with a loud shout to the horses from the driver, we went off at a hard canter.
—  Thomas M’Combie, Australian Sketches, 184.

The company used American ‘Concord’ coaches with leather straps instead of iron springs, giving a softer, rolling ride, though one that made some passengers sick. Pulled by eight horses, the coaches had 12 to 18 people inside, and many more outside, often totalling 40 or 50 passengers. Twenty years after the company started, Anthony Trollope thought the vehicles were comfortable enough:

Cobb’s coaches have the name of being very rough,—and more than once I have been warned against travelling by them…This journey I made and did not perish at all;—and on arriving at Rosedale had made up my mind that twenty hours on a Cobb’s coach through the bush in Australia does not inflict so severe a martyrdom as did in the old days a journey of equal duration on one of the time-famous, much-regretted old English mails.
— Anthony Trollope, Australia and New Zealand, 413-414.

With good horses on the rare good road, coaches might reach 20 km/hr, but they stopped to change horses, and for passengers to take comfort breaks. Coaches averaged about 13 km/hr. The coastal steamer was rather faster and was more comfortable, if you weren’t seasick—but that might happen in a coach, anyhow!

William Kelly said the other companies were inclined to call upon passengers to get down and walk through mud, to the extent that people thought they might as well walk, and save their money. On top of that, the coaches broke and broke down, often needing a blacksmith to fix them. Cobb’s coaches, rather than being cramped, and plated, and bolted with iron, used leather springs, well suited to corduroy roads and broken forest tracks. (William Kelly, Life in Victoria or Victoria in 1853, and Victoria in 1858, vol 1, 280 – 81.)

Honest Australian History

This is about my attempts to disrupt the flow of historical bilge that was churned out to me when I was at school. For example, we were told that Edward John Eyre crossed the Nullarbor (he went around the coast), and the illustration given out was the left-hand one below, which shows him going east, rather than the right-hand one (where he is going west), and right up until the last few days, there was at least one horse.

This was Cod History! Children should not be given such rubbish.

How Eyre and his companion, a Noongar man named Wylie may or may not have travelled.
Now be honest: did you know the companion's name? 

There was nothing in our lessons about everyday life, what people ate or wore, or drank, how they got around, or anything else that made the dead come back to life.

That is what I am fighting against. Then again, the myths about the discovery of gold, and the operations of the bushrangers are all nonsense. And the explorers? They discovered nothing, though they did map the land they travelled over.

So I am setting out to do a bit of truth-telling, and if I get up the noses of a few nasty old fogeys, so be it: there are several ways to get your hands on the facts, all fully documented.

The big lump: You Missed a Bit 

You can buy the dead-tree (print on paper) volume for $60, or the e-book version for just $6, and be aware that the e-book will get additions when I have time. Save your money!

This is almost 350,000 words, and if I say it myself, it is a remarkable resource. It was the first rough draft of the next version (the middling lump, below), which I reduced by 100,000 words so I could add more images.

The print version weighs 1.4 kg, and is 51 mm thick (I used very thin paper), the print size is small, and it still runs out to 820 pages. Don't buy it!

You see, I often come back to particular characters and topics again. later on. Print limitations mean there was no way I could get an index in, but if you use the e-book version, there is a search function waiting to be used.

In short: get the e-book, which needs that $6 price to cover Amazon's in-house costs.

The middling lump: Australia: a Social History

That work is still out there, seeking a publisher: it is 252,000 words, and it is an expanded version of my 80,000 word The Big Book of Australian History, four editions published by the National Library of Australia. At the end of that time, their publishing arm fell over, so I took the rights back, and wrote the version that I thought was needed.

So why all the extra text? Basically, I loathe the way fusty old fogeys want the history of Australia told: nothing before 1788 (aside from a few sailors cruising by, nothing about the geology, the biology or the original people. If you don't understand the geology and the biology, you will fall for the line peddled by the Peasants' Party that Abosrigines wewre dumb: they didn't invent a wheel.

Think about it: kangaroos and wombats cannot pull a cart. By the same token, with no local crop plants, western-style agriculture would not work, but there were still ways to work the land, simple gentle ways of managing and gathering crops.

The silly old grubs' history is about dead but once-important white males and lots of lists that must be learned off by heart. 

I take a different view. The fogeys whine that standards are dropping, that children are no longer taught the important dates and names (presumably including the names of the conservative politicians). If you push them harder to define Australian history, it comes down to Bushrangers and Convicts (both scum), Diggers (the military ones), Explorers (brave openers of untamed wilderness), Farmers (who turned the sterile wilderness into riches at no cost) and Gold (ours by right of conquest). I call this the BCDEFG model.

If you question the politicians about these, they may be able to name five of the more than 2000 bushrangers who once flourished, their understanding of convicts is pitiful, they could not locate a single battlefield on the world map, they would be lucky to name more than four explorers worthy of note (no, Burke and Wills don’t count), they have no understanding of the harm done to country by agriculture, and their “history” of gold is codswallop.

So their BCDEFG history of Australia is a set of worthless scribbles, and only one in fifty of them will amend that to the ABCDEFG, because the ‘Aborigines’ don’t come into it for most of them—and don’t confuse the poor dears by amending it to a more polite IBCDEFG. Mention the role of Indigenous Australia, and they will look at you like a mallee bull that’s just run at full tilt into Crooked Mick of the Speewah (a word of warning: Mick was definitely a legend, but as I tell it, he is highly believable if you aren't paying attention).

Mick also built a railway, and he was a superb cricketer.

For samples, see blog entries like these:

Women Wearing Trousers;

Who Really Found Gold in Australia? but see this as well;

The Strange Case of Samuel Burt;

Australia's slaves (yes, we had some);

What Australians Used to Eat;

How Australians travelled in colonial times;

Getting into the air;

Who Named Australia?;

The Bushrangers.

Australia: a social history

 A short sampler of one of the works up in the air, right now. While this is social history, we need to start with the geology, the rocks that shaped our home, and determined what lives here. It started as the 80,000-word Big Book of Australian History, published in for editions by the National Library of Australia, this is my own Director's Cut, more than three times as long.

This is all the hows and whys that lie beneath Australia’s history, like how the geology of Gondwana shaped its plants and animals and so shaped Indigenous lives, farming and land holding. How the convicts got here, what they wore, how gold was discovered long before Hargraves (and the conspiracy he pulled off), why ladies stood on chairs in Melbourne and waved their hankies, etc. etc. for 252,000 words. This is all the news that was fit to print—but wasn’t.

* * *

If the climate is cold enough to produce frost, water soaks into the surface and changes to ice, which may wedge particles of rock off. Any pointed bits and corners get more water, and are more exposed to the cold, so off they go! Any rock hound looking at rock like this can read its story at a glance, but granite has more surprises to offer.

Near Wave Rock in Western Australia, you can see spheroidal granite—and a truly amazing shape in the rocks, the granite ‘wave’ that you can see just before the start of this chapter. Standing 11 to 12 metres high, the flared slope looks just like a giant wave, about to break.

Wave Rock was featured on 28 April 1965 in Women’s Weekly, and the magazine said the wave shape was a result of wind erosion, though adding the suggestion that the shape might also be due to the ‘action of glaciers’. Later reports said the cause was the action of an ancient sea, lapping the foot of the cliff, and as these tales leak into history, we need to consider them. Geologists asked: if the sea had been there, where were the marine deposits When somebody suggested sand blasting as the cause, the spoilsports explained that a noticeable feature of bare rock surfaces like Hyden Rock or Uluru was that a lot of water ran off them, when the rare rains came by.

That wet the soil around the rock and supported more vegetation than in other places. So even if desert winds came rushing in, the plants would absorb the force of the wind, and stop the sand grains that were supposed to have shaped the ‘wave’. Flared slopes are also found around other large bodies of rock, like the cave seen here, one of the ones around the base of Uluru that visitors are allowed to enter. Similar shapes can also be found on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia.

A cave at the base of Uluru.

The simple answer is that the same water run-off that knocked out the sand-blasting theory was a central part of the true cause of these concave forms. Australia is an old land, with old soils that have been exposed to dry winds over many years. Features like Wave Rock and Uluru that now rear up out of the flat plains were once hidden underground, within the plains. Over time, the winds uncovered them, but once the stone was exposed, rainfall ran straight off it.

The cleverest early white explorers quickly got the idea of asking the people who lived there, the Aboriginal Australians, where to look for water. Some of them followed “native roads”, knowing the tracks made by countless feet had to lead to water, because people who knew the area would not go to dry places. Invariably, the “native wells”, the soaks, lay at the foot of a rocky slope, and this steady supply of water explains how the wave shape developed.

Weathering on the surface of Uluru.

Water weathers some of the minerals in rocks, whether the rock is the granite of Wave Rock, or the arkose sandstone of Uluru. The minerals break down, and in a sense, the rock just rots away under the influence of the damp soil. The minerals that had been rock became dust, and as the wind blew, or a rare flash flood gurgled across the plain, those minerals were carried away.

About this book

I come to this matter as a science-trained observer who can explain how the geology and biology have determined our past, and will determine our future. I explore what makes us Australian, and why that matters.

When I was a child, history was about learning lists of things, but never about the why questions I wanted to ask. And those lists were of important people and places, not about the stuff of the everyday life of life, or how people got their daily needs. There is still too much of that traditionalism, so when the National Library hired me to tell the story of us to the young ones, I jumped in, and we did four editions of The Big Book of Australian History.

Now the National Library has lost its edge, and I want to deliver the same sort of message to Australian adults in any case, because we seem to be losing our edge. As I explain, early on, I like to sit in an overseas eatery or drinkery and let loose an anonymous “G’day!” just to stir the other Australians up. I am the larrikin trouble-maker our history needs.

Starting with Pangaea and Gondwana, I look at how our geology shaped the soil, the climate, plants and animals: with no beasts of burden or high-efficiency crop plants, I examine what makes Australians different, even as those shared differences bring us together. Lacking suitable animals and plants, Indigenous society and land management had to be different. To survive, the first Australians used people rotation, rather than crop rotation.

The European invaders brought in unsuitable crops and unsuitable animals and dismissed the local solutions as primitive, then tried to impose European practices on a foreign clime. The Australians themselves experimented with assimilating a few white people into their society, but these trials mainly failed. At the same time, indigenous artists took to European art media and conventions.

Then we step back, to examine how the Europeans arrived off Australia’s coasts, saw what was in Australia, and liked it enough to grab it. Once they decided to make a land grab, the British invaded, and this is the only way to describe what happened. Denialists may bray that there were no arms, but even if we ignore the guns and flags at the settlement proclamation, the parallels to the Norman invasion make a mockery of any denial.

The Normans looked around England and said, “This is nice land: it’s ours now. Oh, and those laws of yours: forget about them, because you’ll be using ours from now on, and you’d better start speaking our language, as well.” Social disruption is what invasion is about, and that’s what happened in Australia in 1788, along with land-grabbing.

The early white Australians knew the horrors of a sea trip, and the next generation learned from their elders of the sea sickness, heat in the doldrums, slop buckets and dreadful food, but they started wearing their own sorts of clothes and speak their own language. They mixed together so much that there are no regional; dialects, just a few words that betray your colony or state of origin. By the 1820s, an Australian accent and even dialect began to emerge

Next came expansion, but while the explorers may have believed they were going out into trackless and unpeopled areas, they followed the tracks or native roads, and saw either “natives”, or their traces, everywhere. Spilling over the Blue Mountains, freed convicts and new arrivals grabbed more land, forcing the original owners away. Australian ways of doing things began to emerge: bark and slab huts, new clothes and new foods.

A mature society was already there when gold was discovered, and new arrivals enriched our society, Australia, thanks to the inflow of gold, probably had a higher standard of living than any nation in the world, although Australia was not yet a nation. All Australians feared snakes and spiders, they fought drought, floods and fire, but by the 1850s, most people could find their way in the bush and they had laid down roads over the old foot-padded tracks, bringing in engineering to shape Country.

Australians wore the same clothes, ate the same foods, drank the same drinks, sang the same songs, knew the same legends and played the same sports. Becoming a nation in 1901, for a long while, we called ourselves ‘British’, but after gold was officially found (and ever since), people poured in from all over the world, bringing in new ideas and ideals, but all of these people were drawn into speaking and behaving “like Aussies”. In their turn, they warned later foreigners about drop bears and bunyips.

We went off to fight Britain’s wars, though in the 1940s, we changed to regard the USA as a better force to be allied with, and as we approach recent times, from Korea onwards, we joined in the battles of the US. In sport, in science and in the arts, Australia more than held its own on the world stage. We started wearing our own sorts of clothes and speaking our own language. Along the way, women started wearing trousers if they wished: we were forging a new future.

In the end, we started to look at our origins, and sometimes felt less than pleased, but sometimes we thought all was bonzer. Having explored Australia’s troubles, disasters and triumphs, we end with the Voice referendum

Where do you stand? At the end of this warts-and-all book, you will hopefully have moved a bit.

Australianisms

A short sampler of one of the works up in the air, right now. 

There is room for a very interesting dictionary of Australianisms. But I have no time to collect such a list.
Richard Twopeny, Town Life in Australia, 1883.

There are probably 2000 terms and phrases that we regard as Australian (some of them aren't).

Some of them are now lost to the common parlance, but I wondered when they first came into use, because I was writing YA historical fiction.

I speak all three Australian dialects, and adjust my accent and vocabulary, based on where I am, so Struth Bruce, it's down to me to deliver the good oil, right? Take a dekko (1896) at these:

a bad apple: 1890

Bunyip (Gawler, SA), 10 October 1890, 3.

Put a bad apple in a basket of good ones and the whole will become diseased.

billy: 1848

The Courier (Hobart), 29 July 1848, 2. The earliest located instance by a large margin, implying a Tasmanian origin for the word.

… we went in the evening, and he put some bread on the table, and the “billy” on the fire; we told him we would not wait for anything to eat, but would take the things he was going to give and go away.

Collins street cocky: 1924

Williamstown Advertiser (Vic), 15 November 1924, 1. See also Pitt Street farmer; Queen Street cocky and St George’s Terrace cocky.

Before polling day the Farmer’s Union said that the return of a Collins street cocky of the Peacock type would be a tragedy. Now John Allen, leader of the Country party, is proud to lead a Government of which the same Peacock, always eager to be in the ministry, is his second in command. It’s a wonder the paid organisers in the Country party are not ashamed to draw their salaries.

cooee: 1826

The Australian (Sydney), 20 December 1826, 3. This was during a trip, by foot and by boat, to Brisbane Water, via Manly and Pittwater, to somewhere near Terrigal.

Evening was approaching, our provisions were gone — the servant had been despatched to announce us and prepare for dinner, and the struggling through the rich luxuriant vegetation had wearied us more than all the open country, we were nearly exhausted; the freshest of our party was despatched in the right direction, according to the sun, while we rested ourselves anxiously waiting the concerted signal of “coo-ey,” as soon as the path was found.

damper: 1825

Hobart Town Gazette and Van Diemen’s Land Advertiser, 28 January 1825, 2. A report on the harvest.

Then notwithstanding it is so limited as to forbid the enjoyment of superfluities, we have no doubt that it will give the working family a rasher of good bacon, an excellent damper, and a copious draft of new milk, which, we are presumptuous enough to assert, do not appear indicative of famine.

drop bear: 1967

Australian Army (National), 12 October 1967, 1. (The KSLI were the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, engaged in exercises with the Australian Army.)

Something else to come out of PIPING SHRIKE was the hide of a dreaded Drop Bear, below, nailed to a tree outside the Q Store. The KSLI heard many reports from Diggers about this beast. ARMY’s full report on the habits and habitat of the Drop Bear appears on p13, this issue. [Note: Page 13 does not exist.]

Esky: 1955

The Beaudesert Times (Qld), 4 March 1955, 6.

The gifts were a[n] Esky Ice Box and Magic Bric.

fat lamp: 1827

The Australian (Sydney), 20 March 1827, 2. A ride to Bathurst.

Some dirty pork fat or dripping, in a bit of broken plate, was our only lamp…

fat lamp: 1847

Sydney Morning Herald, 22 March 1847, 3.

TAYLOR’S PATENT FAT LAMPS, FOR BURNING TALLOW IN PLACE OF OIL.
This newly invented Lamp is admirably adapted for the Bush and Country Gentlemen, as it will burn waste grease, tallow, or fat of any description, and saves the inconvenience and expense of sending oil into the interior.

It now stretches to 3800 entries covering 1850 terms in 275,000 words. 

More to the point, my work gets the earliest dates far closer to right:

The only competing works fall into two classes: giggle booklets for tourists, presenting Ockers as clones of Paul Hogan or Steve Irwin, offering a few sometimes dubious definitions. These works pay no attention to the origins or changing senses (and no, I don’t define the terms). Then there are two OUP projects which are clearly sub-standard on their research. They are:

Australian words and their origins, edited by Joan Hughes, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989; and

The Australian national dictionary: Australian words and their origins, edited by Bruce Moore. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, second edition, 2016.

Their errors come, I think, from hiring bored undergrads to do their research. Either that or they relied too much on books as sources (and as I know, to my dissatisfaction, it often takes years to get a publisher interested in a slowly-mouldering ms, making the first-use dates appear later). Newspapers are far more immediate, so dates from there for the same phrase tend to be earlier than those drawn from published books. I relied heavily (but not solely) on the National Library of Australia’s Trove newspaper database.

aerial ping pong: Hughes has 1964 for this Moore has 1947, but I have The West Australian, 24 November 1945, 5. Article ‘Brave New Words’.

ant-bed floor: Hughes and Moore have 1913 for this, but I have The Australasian (Melbourne), 12 July 1890, 43.

ant caps: Hughes has 1955 for this, but I have Kalgoorlie Miner, 28 October 1896, 2. I missed checking this in Moore.

Anzac biscuits: Hughes has 1943 for this, Moore has 1923, but I have Sunday Times (Perth), 4 June 1916, 7.

ANZAC Day: Hughes has 1916 for this, but I have The Advertiser, 28 August 1915, 2. The date was to be October 13.

apples (she’s): Hughes and Moore have 1943 for this, but I have Western Mail, 18 December 1941, 35.

I have billy from The Courier (Hobart, Tas.), 29 July 1848, 2, but Bruce Moore p. 92 dates it at 1849.

I have lollies from Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer, 5 September 1846, 2, but Moore. p. 94 dates it at 1854.

Even the Macquarie Dictionary gets it wrong!

The Macquarie Dictionary website gives “since the 1960s” for Things are crook in Tallarook, but I have it in the Benalla Ensign (Vic), 24 January 1941, and I have another hit from 1952.

And then there is Gerry Wilkes’ Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms.

There, the dates there do not hold a candle to mine. I gave up after the letter C, but here are his source dates, with my carefully researched dates in brackets. Note the bolded dates: some of the discrepancies are more than half a century!

(I found one instance, where his date was older than mine, but I could not confirm it.)

aerial pingpong 1963 (1945); Albany doctor 1922 (1906); Apple Isle: 1963 (1903); apples (she’s) 1952 (1945); Arthur or Martha, 1957 (1943); Aussie, 1918 (1915); Aussie rules, 1963 (1907); Aussie salute, 1972 (1966); babbler 1919 (1904); back block, 1872 (1864); back country, 1863(1824); back of Bourke, 1898 (1871); Bagman’s Gazette, 1954 (1900); bags, rough as, 1919 (1911); Bananaland, 1893 (1881); bandicoot, 1845 (1799); bardie 1941 (1897); bathers 1936 (1911); beaut, you, 1964 (1908); Big Fella, 1971 (1938); billabong, 1883 (1838); bindii, 1910 (1907); bitser, 1941 (1926); bitumen, 1953 (1926); Blamey, Lady, 1945 (1942); Block, do the, 1869, (1854); bluetongue (rouseabout), 1943 (1910); Bondi tram, 1951 (1943); boomerang, 1901 (1824); boot, put in the, 1915 (1906); box seat, 1949 (1832); brickfielder, 1833 (1829); bullocky, 1933 (1884); Bundy clock, 1936 (1905); bushman’s clock, 1846 (1850); bush telegraph, 1878 (1863); BYO, 1975 (1968); chain, drag the, 1933 (1840); chiack, 1893 (1875), cooe, within, 1876 (1853); cracker night, 1953 (1905).

I come to beret Caesar

 A short sampler of one of the works up in the air, right now.

pusillanimous. A term used to describe the act of a writer who provides secret or sensitive material in a work in order to constrain others to buy all the available copies of it.

antinomy. 1. A problem for proof readers and spell checkers who often assume it to be an error. 2. The act of applying the normal rules of zoological nomenclature to specimens of the Formicidae.

pentangle. Writing instruments thrown carelessly into a drawer will often form one of these.

author. 1. When used as a self-descriptor, a writer who has yet to find a publisher. Once they realise the pen is mightier than the pseud, they call themselves ‘writer’. 2. An author was once a person who put words together with the aid of a quill, drawn from a goose’s left wing. In recent times, recognising the undue influence that the goose seemed to be having, many writers have moved to the use of word processors. In this, they have failed to recognise what many people now understand: that to err is human, but that real stupidity is generally associated with artificial intelligence.

beret. There was an Italian explorer named Antonio who had gone into an area where, he was warned, there were cannibals who liked to eat Italian, or to be precise, they liked to eat Italians. Not relishing the prospect of a very hot bath with chopped-up vegetables, Antonio took a Parisian beret with him, and wore it all the time, so he could pass himself off as Antoine, the French chef.
He explained to the locals that the beret was a magical item which Frenchmen wore, so they would be safe from all misfortunes. Alive or dead, the wearer was protected by this item of headgear.
The cannibals made him welcome, but one night, they showed him a mummy in a toga, and when they unwrapped it, he saw that it was wearing a laurel wreath.
“Antoine,” they told him, “this is a very old Italian called Julius Caesar. He’s nicely aged, and we were wondering if you could help us cook him. We know the Gauls, your ancestors, hated him…”
Antoine found himself in a quandary. How could he refuse to cook a fellow-Italian and not blow his cover?
Then he saw a way out. He took off his headgear and exchanged it for Caesar’s wreath.
The cannibals were curious. “What does this mean?” they asked.
He shook his head and smiled, gently. “I come to beret Caesar, not to braise him.”

a fortiori. The English tradition of the steeplechase has very ancient roots, going back to the time when much of Britain was under Roman control, but several 17^th century authors have claimed that the Romans used Pictish slaves as their mounts. In fact, the Romans did indeed ride “Picts”, but these were Pict ponies, the animals more modern writers have called pit ponies, and not humans The races went along Hadrian’s wall, from fort to fort, hence the name.

incommunicado. The ancient Roman British fortified town of Communicadum is the modern-day city of Coventry. As a consequence, this term is no more than an ancient form of sent to Coventry.

Abacus. A Roman general, Abacus was the grandson of Count Belisarius of the Byzantine Roman Empire, from whom he inherited title of Count. His name is derived from A-Bacchus, a spurner of Bacchus, but it was a name he often failed to live up to. He settled in Britain, late in the 6th century and married the Lady Beadawen of the Cambrians. Their son, Abacus Beadus, was the first of a line of counts that ended when Abacus’ great-great-grandson, the venerable Bede, entered the church, and relinquished the title.

coracle. A small water craft, made from a light wood frame, covered with leather. The best-known ones today are from Britain, but they were originally a Greek invention. Today, the only Greek version still widely known is the Delphic coracle.

Marshall McLuhan. A man who wrote and published several books to demonstrate that the print medium was dead. He dies in 1980, my reference books say.

exfoliation. The act of taking a leaf from somebody’s book.

doggerel. Poetry when it is written by an enemy.

verse. Poetry written by somebody who is not a friend.

haiku. A poetic form much favoured by absent-minded poets who keep losing their rhyming dictionaries.

pentode. Any form of verse with five lines, like a limerick, or a haiku written by an innumerate poet.

Jacques Prévert. A French poet and film-script writer who owed his continued high levels of employment to the frequent errors made in typing his surname. His employers were, however, often disappointed.

limerick. A poem for a person with a short attention span.

prosody. The art of creating either a prose work about odes, or an ode about prose. It is now a dead art, and we are unlikely ever to fathom what the ancients actually meant by the term. The claim, sometimes heard, that the term was invented by two drunken poets, in order to confuse future generations, makes too much sense for it to be really true.

period furniture. Perhaps the best-known example would be the electric chair, commonly used to end a sentence.

gallows humour. Full-throttle comedy, often containing an element of suspense. Not suitable for the highly strung.

The Well-tempered Clavier. The source of a great deal of pleasant music, composed by the immortal J. S. Bach. Bach’s lesser-known Bad-tempered Clavier, like Beethoven’s Rage over a Lost Penny, is a source of a different choler.

Othello. If this play were set in Scandinavia, it would need to involve a Norse of a different colour, especially if the production included a walk-on part for Erik the Red.

air conditioner. A device for spreading infection and assorted toxins equally throughout a building. These machines must always be fitted with the manufacturer’s specified pipes, and never with a hose of a different cooler.

White House. A house of a different colour.

It goes on like that for 84,000 words.

Reviews:

A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma…
—W. S. Churchill, A History of the Anguish-Speaking Peoples.

Oh, what a wangled web he weaves…
—William Wordsworth, The Fruitgrowers Gazette and Advertiser.

Infamy, infamy—they’ve all got it infamy.
—Kenneth Williams, Carrion Cleopatra.

He would say that, wouldn’t he?
—Randy Mice-Davies, Buxton Bugle.

Nobody ever erected a statue to a cricket.
—Jean Sibelius (attrib.)

Exceedingly dense.
—F. R. Leavis, New Hearings in English Pottery.

Nothing like having a bucket of cold water flung over you to make you see things as they really are!
—Enid Blyton, Lashings of Cream.

…we tend to believe whatever we first hear about strangers.
—Clifford Irving, True Tales.

I trust my readers will join me in grandly ignoring the complaints of sour-faced and grumpish scholars that “no such person” ever existed…
—Sir John Mandeville, Travels.

One of the most murmurable loose carollaries ever…
—James Joyce, Finnegans Wake.

I don’t believe it!
—Victor Meldrew, Journal of Onkaparingology.

Better than a bag full of angry penguins.
—Ern Malley, Yandackworroby Times.

It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been run before may legally be run again…
― Jonathan Swift, Gullible's Travels.

Let us be grateful to people who make us sappy…
—Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann.

Other possible titles:

A Crazy Mixed-Up Squid;
A Dark Course Of A Different College;
A Hard Axe To Follow;
A Serpent Of Two Pastors;
As Like As Pork And Peas;
Can You Tell Me How Long The Drain’s Been Gone?;
Dental Men Prefer Bonds;
Faint Art Never Won Fair Lady;
Gentleman Prefer Bronze;
Joggers Can’t Be Boozers;
Never Dog A Fled Horse;
No More Walton But De Falla Next Time;
No Pool Like An Oil Pool;
Of Meissen Men;
Prison Walls Are Never Built To Scale;
Privateers And Public Gossip;
Robbery With Violins;
Thank Heavens For Small Murphys;
The Lhasa Of Two Weasels;|
The Nightjar Nurture Controversy;
The Trout Quintet Needs A Piano Tuna;
The Wine Of Yeast Resistance;
The Wurst Is Yet To Come;
They Also Surf Who Only Stand And Wade;
To Bill Two Kurds With One Stone;
Where There’s A Wheel, There’s A Wain.