For Australiana Mavens

Subject: For Australiana Mavens
From:
Date: 05 Aug 98 - 04:36 AM

Was the expression "On the Wallaby" invented by Henry Lawson for his poem of that name? If not, what is its origin?

Murray

Subject: RE: For Australiana Mavens
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 05 Aug 98 - 07:04 PM

G'day Murray,

That's an interesting question. The old one was whether Paterson made up the expression "Waltzing Matilda", for the same meaning. There is a collected song "Australia's on the Wallaby" as well as Lawson's poem, in much the same form, "Freedom on the Wallaby". Arguments about which came first, etcetera, are bubbling below the surface - I got on viewpoint from collector/academic Chris Sullivan last week and have heard other views over the years.

I guess the starting point, as far as printed sources go, is to check with the Australian National Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 1988) as this gives the full Oxford English Dictionary treatment to Australian expressions - chronological citations of the earliest use in each particular sense of a word. I will check with my copy when I get home.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: For Australiana Mavens
From:
Date: 05 Aug 98 - 09:18 PM

I will look foreward to your answer Bob, since I don't own that dictionary and it's raining too hard in Sydney to go over to the Library :-(

Murray

Subject: RE: For Australiana Mavens
From: BSeed
Date: 06 Aug 98 - 12:13 AM

Och, you Aussies are a delicate lot, after all.

Subject: RE: For Australiana Mavens
From:
Date: 06 Aug 98 - 01:20 AM

"Delicate" is the best euphemism for "lazy" I have heard in a while!

Murray

Subject: RE: For Australiana Mavens
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 06 Aug 98 - 02:06 AM

G'day Murray and BSeed,

I don't think the rain (roughly what West Coast Tasmanians call "dry Rain" ... because they let the kids stay out in it) is only an excuse. Since Macquarie Uni puts out its own dictionary, generally held to be the official dictionary of Australian English, they don't keep a copy of Oxford's 'Australian National Dictionary' on their shelves!

Fortunately I do.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: For Australiana Mavens
From:
Date: 06 Aug 98 - 04:31 AM

That's right Bob, but the Macquarie dictionary doesn't go into the derivation of the expression. We'll have to rely on an export.

Murray

Subject: RE: For Australiana Mavens
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 06 Aug 98 - 06:31 PM

G'day Murray and all ...

Of course the question of import / export gets interesting in the case of Oxford's Australian National Dictionary. The authority and standardisation of the Macquarie version of Australian English is a great asset, even if I keep buying copies of the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary - precisely because I like to have derivations for all entries. This should, however, be seen against the background view of four (admittedly short) bookshelves filled with dictionaries and dictionary-format references!

The expression “on the wallaby” is a typically Australian contraction of the slightly longer phrase “on the wallaby track”. The first citation in the Australian National Dictionary is from 1846; ‘Stephen’s Adelaide Miscellany’, 4 Oct. “The police themselves are usually well-treated in the bush ... they make a ‘round’ through the district, and get a meal at every hut, and one man from every said hut (besides those mobs on the ‘wallaby track’) stops for a night at the police station in return.”

There follow citations from 1861, 1871, 1887, 1900 &c. The term seems to have always applied to the “swaggie” - the itinerant labourer of no fixed abode. As you can see, the phrase was in print at least 21 years before Henry Lawson was born - and some 19 years before E. J. Overbury published his poem “On the wallaby track” in ‘Bush Poems’, in 1865. This poem, of course, was trimmed down by the folk process, acquired a tune and became the widely-collected song “Oh, the springtime it brings on the shearing”, which includes the line “... the hills and the plains are well-trodden by the men on the wallaby track”.

The song ‘Australia’s on the wallaby’ was collected by A.V. Vennard (‘Bill Bowyang’) around 1932, printed in his ‘Old Bush Recitations’ and was picked up in Stewart & Keesing’s 1957 expansion of A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson’s ‘Old Bush Songs’. The lines of the first verse indicate that the version collected dates from around the ‘big bust’, the depression of the 1890s. If there was an earlier form of the song, it has been submerged in the depression theme.

Henry Lawson’s “Freedom on the wallaby” has a number of similarities and direct echoes of the other song and the poem has been collected sung to the same tune. It was also a product of the economic woes of the 1890s, - published in the ‘Worker’, 16 May, 1891. The Queensland government felt Lawson should be jailed for sedition ... but why should he be any different from everyone else?

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: For Australiana Mavens
From:
Date: 06 Aug 98 - 09:45 PM

Great Bob. It is so simple when you get enough information. "On the wallaby track" really does make sense.

BTW speaking of wallabies. When I was in Tassie I ran into (figuratively!) a tiny member of the Kangaroo family during a bush walk. I was told the name of it, but I didn't write it down and now I forgot. Do you know what the next step down in size from the wallaby is called there. It was a real little fellow that could think it was hiding under a little fern bush.

Murray

Subject: RE: For Australiana Mavens
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 06 Aug 98 - 10:28 PM

G'day again Murray,

Even though they actually have Australia's largest roos, the Tasmanian Forester, they rarely see them and Taswegians call the Bennet's Wallaby a Roo - and (at one of the Midlands football club) they organise annual Roo Drives to shoot them and then hold a 'Roo' barbecue afterwards.

Somewhere in my files I have pic of a sign advertising burgers at the Huon Valley (Cygnet) Folk Festival: Roo is listed ... but Healthy / Vegitarian (sic) was N/A! Bennet's Wallaby is 'macropus rufogriseus' .. the same as what we tend to call the ‘red-necked wallaby’ in the Blue Mountains.

The smaller potorid wallaby, found in the wet sclerophyl and rainforest is called (somebody else)’s Wallaby but I can’t remember whose! When it comes to me, I will post the correct name - there are so many small wallabies named for long gone naturalists that it is hard to remember them all.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: For Australiana Mavens
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 06 Aug 98 - 11:22 PM

G'day ...

Esprit d'escalier ... encore! Shortly after logging out of Mudcat, I remember that the small Tasmanian potorid wallaby is not anyone's wallaby at all - it is called the Rufous Wallaby, being more reddish than the larger Bennet's, which, in its Tasmanian form, is hairier and more griseus than rufous.

I remember that the Rufous Wallabies came around about dusk, up a Waldheim's Chalet in the 1970s, and would cadge bits of bread or fruit. They would then stand around neatly holding the food they were nibbling in their forepaws - until they got mugged by a Black Currawong ... flying straight at their faces until they dropped the goodies, which were adroitly grabbed in mid-air before they made away.

I didn't see the Rufous near the hut in recent years - they have probably been pushed away by the Brush-tailed possums which, in typical Tasmanian fashion, are bigger and furrier than their mainland counterparts ... and they have been taking lessons in manners from the Tasmanian Devils!

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: For Australiana Mavens
From:
Date: 07 Aug 98 - 01:19 AM

The name I was given for the 'roo had only one word, but that word might have been Rufus.

The Sydney possums are pretty big, and I think they take lessons from the local politicians. I would rather they got closer to the devils, myself. Whoever heard of a Tasmanian Devil moving in your attic with its family!

Murray

Subject: RE: For Australiana Mavens
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 07 Aug 98 - 02:49 AM

G'day yet again Murray,

Yeah, the Tasmanians can be pretty laconic in their speech. They tend to call the animals just roos and wallabies - or, if pressed, Bennets and Rufous. I'll check a few references at home and see if there are any other common names. I don't know what Pommy term could be bent to describe them, but the Tasmanians would try.

When Richard Evans (concertina player / maker at Bell, Blue Mts) was down the West Coast some years back, he asked a local shopkeeper if there was much wildlife about (Strahan?). She replied that, if he went down to the creek, he might see some porcupines and moles and maybe a badger or two ... echidnas, platypus and wombats! My mother-in-law tends to use the same terms, but she is 88!

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: For Australiana Mavens
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 09 Aug 98 - 06:46 PM

G'day Murray,

I had overlooked another synonym for the Rufous Wallaby (thylogale billardierii) ... now its official preferred name: Tasmanian Pademelon and, consequently this is the name used by naturalists, guides and rangers. Presumably, a ranger in a Tasmanian National Park would simply call the animal a ‘pademelon’.I can’t say that I heard this name used by ordinary Tasmanians when I lived down there in the 1960s and I tend not to refer to wallabies by a name that had always meant, to me, an introduced weed (paddymelon).

The name Pademelon, for the thylogale, seems to be a Sydney (Dharuk) word - although much the same Aboriginal name occurs as far south as Victoria. I can not see any evidence of its historical use in Tasmania and I suspect that it has been pressed onto the Tasmanian species to keep the taxonomy simple.

There is also another, smaller potorid found in the dry sclerophyll forests of central and eastern Tasmania - the Tasmanian Bettong or Eastern Rat-kangaroo (bettongia gaimardi). This is only about 300 mm tall and strictly nocturnal, so I doubt that this would be the species you saw.

Regards,

Bob Bolton