FullReads

And Manly Beach on a holiday! Thousands of people in fresh summer dress, hundreds of bare-legged, happy children running where the “blue sea over the white sand rolls,” racing in and out with the rollers, playing with the glorious Pacific. Manly–“Our Village” –Manly Beach, where we used to take our girls, with the most beautiful harbour in the world on one side, and the width of the grandest ocean on the other. Ferny gullies and “fairy dells” to north and south, and every shady nook its merry party or happy couple.

Manly Beach–I remember five years ago (oh, how the time goes by!)–and two names that were written together in the sand when the tide was coming in. And the boat home in the moonlight, past the Heads, where we felt the roll of the ocean, and the moonlit harbour–and the harbour lights of Sydney–the grandest of them all.

[The end]

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Some definitions and Australian slangs:

anabranch: A bend in a river that has been cut through by the stream. The main current now runs straight, the anabranch diverges and then rejoins. See billabong.

Barcoo-rot. “Persistent ulceration of the skin, chiefly on the hands, and often originating in abrasions”. (Morris, Australian English). Barcoo is a river in Queensland.

billabong. Based on an aboriginal word. Sometimes used for an anabranch, but more often used for one that, in dry season or droughts especially, is cut off at either or both ends from the main stream. It is often just a muddy pool, and may indeed dry up completely.

blackfellow: condescending for Australian Aboriginal

blackleg: someone who is employed to cross a union picket line to break a workers’ strike. As Molly Ivins said, she was brought up on the three great commandments: do not lie; do not steal; never cross a picket line. Also scab.

blanky or — : Fill in your own favourite word. Usually however used for “bloody”–see crimson/gory.

blooming: actually used in speech instead of “bloody” (see crimson).

bluey: swag. Explanation in Lawson’s “The romance of the Swag” here.

bob: one shilling

bullocky: Bullock driver. A man who drove teams of bullocks yoked to wagons carrying e.g. wool bales or provisions. Proverbially rough and foul mouthed.

bummer: A cadger or bludger. Someone who begs for food. Interesting Americanism already. Also, tramp. (Different meaning today)

bush: originally referred to the low tangled scrubs of the semi-desert regions (cf. `mulga’ and `mallee’), and hence equivalent to “outback”. Now used generally for remote rural areas (“the bush”) and scrubby forest.

bushfire: wild fires: whether forest fires or grass fires.

bushman/bushwoman: someone who lives an isolated existence, far from cities, “in the bush”. (today: a “bushy”)

bushranger: an Australian “highwayman”, who lived in the `bush’– scrub–and attacked especially gold carrying coaches and banks. Romanticised as anti-authoritarian Robin Hood figures–cf. Ned Kelly–but usually very violent.

bunyip: Aboriginal monster, inhabiting waterholes, billabongs particularly. Adopted into European legends.

caser: Five shillings (12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound (“quid”)). As a coin, a crown piece.

chaffing: teasing, mocking good-humouredly

churchyarder: Sounding as if dying–ready for the churchyard = cemetery

crimson = gory: literary substitutes for “bloody”–the “colonial oath”, unacceptable in polite company. Why, is a complete mystery. Popularly explained as contraction of “by Our Lady”. Unproved. In reproducing (badly) a German’s pronunciation of Australian, Lawson retains the word, but spells it “pluddy”.

dood: Dude. A classy/cool dresser.

drover: one who “droves”

droving: driving on horseback cattle or sheep from where they were fattened to a a city, or later, a rail-head.

fiver: a five pound note

gory: see crimson

Homebush: Saleyard, market area in Sydney

humpy: rough shack

half-caser: Two shillings and sixpence. As a coin, a half-crown.

jackaroo: (Jack + kangaroo; sometimes jackeroo)–someone, in early days a new immigrant from England, learning to work on a sheep/cattle station (U.S. “ranch”.)

jim-jams: the horrors, d.t.’s

jumbuck: a sheep (best known from Waltzing Matilda: “where’s that jolly jumbuck, you’ve got in your tucker bag”.)

larrikin: anything from a disrespectful young man to a violent member of a gang (“push”). Was considered a major social problem in Sydney of the 1880’s to 1900. The Bulletin, a magazine in which much of Lawson was published, spoke of the “aggressive, soft-hatted stoush brigade”. Anyone today who is disrespectful of authority or convention is said to show the larrikin element in the Australian character.