Waratah. Proteaceae family, like banksias and grevilleas.

Fitzroy in the 1920s was very much a hangout of what these days would be called spivs.

The previous postings have got the others right but I can't help with "Egyptians" as a colloquialism. In 1970s Fitzroy I remember having dinner with some friends and we got to talking about the use of newspapers under lino floor coverings and the sorts of things people had found in them. We noticed that the lino of the room we were dining in had an edge that could be lifted so we checked to see if there was anything underneath it. What we found was a newspaper from 1930. The only info I can now remember was that it contained a review of "Mr Hardy's latest novel" (I forget which one, although it was clearly Thomas Hardy who was being described) and the sports pages. These contained a large number of terms that obviously were well understood in 1930 but which were completely foreign to us; the only one I remember was "fork" meaning a jockey.

Cheers, Rowan