By David Astle
James Froude, an English historian, sailed to Australia in 1885. He narrated his trip in Oceana, recording how his ship “carried him safely down under”. In one sentence, a term was born, our famed preposition, since etched by song and Euro-centric maps: Down Under. Terra Australis. Home.
A glorified nickname, really, saying so much yet ignoring plenty – our land’s layers for starters. Our paradox of antiquity and newness. Just imagine trying to capture that infinity in 100 words. Not just our landmass, the biodiversity, but some 65000 years of Indigenous occupation, the early ships and penal chapter, the gold rush and land grabs, the Great War and sequel, the heritage salad, the pollywaffle …
It’s no easy feat to capture Australia in 100 words.
It’s like herding feral cats, but that hasn’t daunted Dr Amanda Laugesen, director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre. From deep time to Voice, via wowser and Strine, her new book is a stock cube to this continent’s ox: Australia in 100 Words (NewSouth, 2024).
Arranged by time, not alphabet, the glossary glides from Qantasaurus (truly) to tjukurpa – the Pitjantjatjara word for Dreaming. Songlines and sacred lore. Disrupted by the Brits, and the whole semantic framing of settlement over invasion. Archaisms too, such as bellowser (a convict transported for life) or pollutionist (an advocate of convict supply to the juvenile colony).
Next comes the gold frenzy, the 1850s yielding digger and dinkum, keepsakes compared to the transience of shicer (a dud mine) or long tom: a washing trough. Indeed, reading the lexicon, I sensed eras swim by, our story’s “everywhen” on each page. This adverb was coined by Sydney anthropologist William Stanner to outline the non-Western mindset of time, where the ageless story of Country imbues the past, the moment and tomorrow.
Fron gunyah to Gallipoli, I grew to see the flimsiness of Down Under. Its betrayal too, falsely making Europe superior, the roof to our red dirt. From susso to Mabo, Laugesen’s book puts our island foremost. Complete with homegrown humour too, including Thylarctos plummetus (or drop bear), chook lit (rural romance novels – also known as mallee roots) and the brick venereal sprawl of suburbia.
Australia in 100 Words by Amanda Laugesen.
Two B-words jostle for major turf. Bludger, for one, began life as a bludgeoner, a sex-worker’s pimp armed with a pocket sap. This label evolved to mean anyone living off another’s toil, a white-collar sinecure. Follow the dots and you arrive at idler, a leaner (not lifter) in Abbott-speak.
Bogan is its own mini-essay, a caste defying any tidy box. Not just the mystery of its derivation (a NSW river? A Perth school?) but the word’s ties to ocker, or westie or AC/DC music. Defying what many presume, bogan transcends class and education. As a synonym, uncultured fails to see boganism as its own culture, one that is typically white, derisive, flag-waving, beer-drinking and bawls the rejoinder to “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie…”
Surprises also lurk. Greenie, say, owns local roots, the slang escorting the world’s first Green party, in Tasmania, in 1972. Scott Morrison’s fair-go mantra – or more “having a go to get a go” – was preluded by Dame Enid Lyons, the first woman elected to the House of Reps, in 1943, who bandied the phrase across her newspaper columns.
Travel this glossary and you’ll glean this nation’s everywhen. Across 100 handpicked words, Down Under sits front and centre. From hoon to halal snack pack, you will meet the unique, sacrosanct, larrikin, evolving dialect we share right here, Terra Australis, home.