The sayings and slang that only Victorians understand
When Karen from Brighton uttered the now famous phrase, “I’ve done all of Brahhton” she added a new local saying to our state’s lexicon. Here are some other great sayings and slang you will only hear in Victoria.
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We Victorians have a unique way of expressing ourselves.
Some of our favourite catchphrases are deeply rooted in the places and people we know and love.
Here is a selection of some of the best uniquely Victorian sayings we’ve heard and used through the years.
FIT AS A MALLEE BULL
The Mallee is tough, hard country for most agricultural pursuits, so it stands to reason that a bull raised in the Mallee is going to be strong and healthy.
While this saying could apply to cattle raised in Mallee scrub country in South Australia or NSW, Victoria has an official Big Thing ™ celebrating the Mallee Bull in the main street of Birchip.
IT’S BUSIER THAN BOURKE ST
It’s hard to imagine, but before the mall, Bourke St was a commercial thoroughfare that bustled with traffic until the ’70s, when the Melbourne City Council closed the section from Swanston to Elizabeth streets.
DRIVING A TOORAK TRACTOR
A big, flash four-wheel drive vehicle or modern SUV that’s never seen a country road, let alone a bush track.
IF I’M WRONG, I’LL BARE MY BUM IN BOURKE ST
When you want to assert that your prediction about something is so accurate that you would subject yourself to certain public humiliation if you were wrong, this is what you say.
THE CARLTON DRAFT
A bitter southerly wind blowing up Swanston St towards the old Carlton and United Brewery was sometimes known as the Carlton Draft, a nod to the brewery and the Carlton Draught brand.
CHARGING MORE THAN A COLLINS ST SPECIALIST
This is a hark back to the days when top notch medical specialists often had their private practices in Collins St.
SCAREDY CAT/COPYCAT FROM BALLARAT
Both these Ballarat residents went to school and got the strap, allegedly.
SCREAMER
Whether you’re referring to an attention-grabbing high mark on the footy field or a two-pot screamer who doesn’t handle CUB’s finest products or any other alcohol well, both sayings are inherently Victorian in origin.
WRONG SIDE OF THE YARRA
Once, it was said that a person born or living on the northern banks of the Yarra and, therefore, not from the so-called leafy eastern suburbs was born “on the wrong side of the Yarra. Hipsters have now adopted the phrase to describe anyone living in the inner suburbs but on the other side of the river. “I’d like to date him but he lives in St Kilda. He’s on the wrong side of the Yarra”.
THE UPSIDE DOWN RIVER
This is both a derisive term from interstaters and a point of pride for Melburnians about the river that gave our city life. Land clearing and silt from agricultural activity upstream gives the Yarra its muddy appearance.
COLLINS ST FARMER
A person who earns their living in the financial industry, which in Melbourne was traditionally based in the middle section of Collins St.
YOU’LL END UP IN TURANA
This is a phrase your mum might have shouted at you if you were misbehaving very badly. Turana, not the similar sounding Holden Torana, was the name of an old youth detention centre in the Melbourne suburb of Parkville.
YOU WEREN’T BROUGHT UP ON THE BACK STREETS OF FITZROY
This mum-ism applied to those times when you were displaying appalling manners. It’s just as outdated as the Turana reference because the once poverty-stricken backstreets of Fitzroy have been dramatically gentrified since the 1970s.
COLLINGWOOD SIX-FOOTER
A Magpie player who was small in stature but who played hard and tough like a big man was said to be a “Collingwood six-footer”. These days, a player of 183cm isn’t all that big.
THINGS ARE CROOK IN TALLAROOK
When things aren’t going your way and the future looks grim, “things are crook in Tallarook” is a great description that has put the tiny central Victorian town, just south of Seymour, in the national spotlight.
MORE FRONT THAN MYERS
When ex-Bendigo drapers Sidney and Elcon Myer opened their first Melbourne store, they went big.
They took over a former drapery and purchased adjoining property to build the largest department store in the southern hemisphere, which stretched along much of the north side of what we now know as the Bourke St Mall.
“More front than Myers”, however, refers to someone whose behaviour is assertive, cheeky or bold.
BUCKLEY’S AND NONE
This is both a wonderful statement meaning someone has little or no chance of succeeding and a delicious pun, both of which date back to the earliest days of European settlement in Victoria.
The saying relates to escaped convict William Buckley, who fled the short-lived convict outpost near present-day Sorrento in 1803 and was assumed dead, lost forever to the bush.
But Buckley befriended the local Indigenous people and lived a nomadic lifestyle right around Port Phillip until he presented himself to John Batman’s settling party in June 1835.
The pun comes from the Buckley and Nunn department store that operated in Melbourne from 1851 until it was taken over by David Jones in 1982.
HE’S NEVER BEEN OFF THE TRAM TRACKS
Someone who never ventures beyond Melbourne’s inner suburbs.
IN MORE SHIT THAN A WERRIBEE DUCK
We all know what gets piped down Geelong Rd from Melbourne to Werribee.
A duck swimming in a pond full of that stuff at the Werribee treatment plant is an apt description for anyone who finds themselves in a highly adverse situation.
I’LL MEET YOU UNDER THE CLOCKS
This one is as relevant today as when the clocks were first installed at the front entrance to Flinders St station. We’re still doing it.
A MELBOURNE CUP FIELD
The race that stops a nation has always been known for the number of entrants competing to win Australia’s most prestigious thoroughbred race. Now, the saying is used around Australia as a description of an election contest with many candidates or any competition with a big group of entrants.
STRAIGHT TO THE POOLROOM / TELL HIM HE’S DREAMIN’
The room in which Darryl Kerrigan put all his most prized possessions.
Thanks to Working Dog’s 1997 Melbourne film The Castle, this expression now applies for anything that we value highly.
See also “Tell him he’s dreamin”. Darryl was the oracle of all things listed for sale in the old Melbourne Trading Post, and his exclamation about the price of jousting sticks and other items is now common for anything we might consider overpriced.
THE ONLY GOOD THING ABOUT NSW IS THAT IT KEEPS VICTORIA FURTHER AWAY FROM QUEENSLAND
It’s true. Sure, NSW has locked us out and Queensland has pretty much owned our footy this year, but even in coronavirus lockdown, Victoria is better than anywhere else in Australia.
MORE VICTORIAN NOSTALGIA
WHAT MELBOURNE WAS LIKE WHEN SAINTS WON FLAG
THE MELBOURNE FOOD ICONS WE’D LOVE TO REVISIT
WEIRD AND WONDERFUL KIDS SHOWS OF 70s AND 80s
Originally published as The sayings and slang that only Victorians understand