Australia's Funniest Yarns
Also by Graham Seal
Great Australian Stories
Great Anzac Stories
Larrikins, Bush Tales and Other Great Australian Stories
The Savage Shore
Great Australian Journeys
Great Convict Stories
Great Bush Stories
________
Praise for other books by Graham Seal
Great Australian Stories
‘The pleasure of this book is in its ability to give a fair dinkum insight into the richness of Australian story telling.’ —The Weekly Times
‘A treasure trove of material from our nation’s historical past.’ —The Courier Mail
‘This book is a little island of Aussie culture—one to enjoy.’ —Sunshine Coast Sunday
The Savage Shore
‘A fascinating, entertainingly written voyage on what have often been rough and murky seas.’ —The Daily Telegraph
‘Colourful stories about the spirit of navigation and exploration, and of courageous and miserable adventures at sea.’ —National Geographic
‘… a gripping account of danger at sea, dramatic shipwrecks, courageous castaways, murder, much missing gold, and terrible loss of life.’ —The Queensland Times
Larrikins, Bush Tales and Other Great Australian Stories
‘… another collection of yarns, tall tales, bush legends and colourful characters … from one of our master storytellers.’ —The Queensland Times
Great Anzac Stories
‘… allows you to feel as if you are there in the trenches with them.’ —The Weekly Times
‘They are pithy short pieces, absolutely ideal for reading when you are pushed for time, but they are stories you will remember for much longer than you would expect.’ —The Ballarat Courier
Great Australian Journeys
‘Readers familiar with Graham Seal’s work will know he finds and writes ripper, fair-dinkum, true blue Aussie yarns. His books are great reads and do a lot for ensuring cultural stories are not lost. His new book, Great Australian Journeys, is no exception.’ —The Weekly Times
‘Epic tales of exploration, survival, tragedy, romance, mystery, discovery and loss come together in this intriguing collection of some of Australia’s most dramatic journeys from the 19th and early 20th centuries.’ —Vacations and Travel
Great Convict Stories
‘More than just a retelling of some of the most fascinating yarns, Seal is interested in how folklore around the convicts grew from the colourful tales of transportation and what impact that had on how we see our convict heritage.’ —The Daily Telegraph
‘With a cast of colourful characters from around the country—the real Artful Dodger, intrepid bushrangers … Great Convict Stories offers a fascinating insight into life in Australia’s first decades.’ —Sunraysia Daily
Great Bush Stories
‘This collection is Graham Seal at his best.’ —The Land
‘Seal draws effectively on the rich Australian bush traditions of versification and balladeering … He takes us back to a time when “the bush” was central to popular notions of Australian identity, with the likes of Henry Lawson and “Banjo” Paterson serving to both celebrate and mythologise it.’ —Writing WA
First published in 2019
Copyright © Graham Seal 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Every effort has been made to trace the holders of copyright material. If you have any information concerning copyright material in this book please contact the publishers at the address below.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: info@allenandunwin.com
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
ISBN 978 1 76052 845 4
eISBN 978 1 76087 291 5
Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Cover design: Luke Causby/Blue Cork
Front cover photos: ‘Guard Bill O’Brien enjoying a chat with Victoria Walsh while Tea and Sugar train is at Karonic.’ National Archives of Australia
Dedicated to the bull artists, jokers and yarn-spinners of the great Australian tradition
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: An edge like a chainsaw
1 BULL
What a hide
The split dog
Drop bears
Hoop snakes
Giant mozzies
Crooked Mick and the Speewah
Dinkum!
The exploding dunny
The well-dressed ’roo
Loaded animals
The blackout babies
The most beautiful lies
The Pommies and the Yanks
Aussie efficiency
2 CHARACTERS
The Drongo
Cousin Jacks
Tom Doyle
The Widow Reilly’s pig
The Convict’s Tour to Hell
Make it hours instead of days
Who was Billy Barlow?
Jacky Bindi-i
Jimmy Ah Foo
Snuffler Oldfield
Corny Kenna
The Hodja
Dad makes a blue
Dad, Dave and Mabel
Anzac characters
How he worked his nut
Tom ’n’ Oplas
Three blokes at a pub
3 HARD CASES
The cocky
‘Hungry’ Tyson
Ninety the Glutton
Galloping Jones
Christy Palmerston
Moondyne Joe
The Eulo Queen
Wheelbarrow Jack
Long Jack
Diabolical Dick
Puppy pie and dog’s dinner
The World’s Greatest Whinger
The Captain of the Push
The Souvenir King
Mrs Delaney
Dopes
Taken for a ride
Bea Miles
Doing business with Reg
An unwelcome miracle
4 DIGGEROSITIES
A million cat-calls
Religion
Monocles
Food and drink
Army biscuits
Babbling Brooks
The casual digger
Officers
Birdie
The piece of paper
Parables of Anzac
Baldy becomes mobile
The Roo de Kanga
Blighty
Very irritated
Thinking ahead
Finding the ‘Awstralians’
Please let us take Tobruk!
Count your children
Parable of the kit inspection
The air force wife
5 WORKING FOR A LAUGH
The garbos’ Christmas
A Christmas message
Rechtub Klat
The wharfie’s reply
The union dog
Working on the railway
High-octane travel
Railway birds
Total eclipse of communication
The laws of working life
> Somebody else’s job
The basic work survival guide
Twelve things you’ll never hear an employee tell the boss
Excessive absence
The end of a perfect day
Total Quality Management (TQM)
Policy development
The boat race
Prospective Employee Assessment
Specialised High-Intensity Training (S.H.I.T.)
Early retirement
Differences between you and your boss
What do they really mean?
The little red hen
The airline steward’s revenge
The boss
After work …
Meetings
Prayer for the stressed
The job application
The boss’s reply
Ode to public servants
Jargoning
The Jargon Generator
Governmentium
The surprise party
The sex life of an electron
Death of employees
Workplace agreements
Population of Australia
6 A SWAG OF LAUGHS
The Great Australian Yarn
The Bagman’s Gazette
A stump speech
The phantom bullocky
A fine team of bullocks
Language!
Droving in a bar
Slow trains
Service!
Meekatharra ice blocks
The redback spider
The Great Australian Adjective
Lore of the track
Sniffling Jimmy
The poetic swaggie
Where the angel tarboys fly
Bowyang Bill and the cocky farmer
A good feed
The Swagman’s Union
A glorious spree
The Dimboola cat farm
A farmer’s lament
What’s on, Cookie?
The maiden cook
The farmer’s will
7 THE LAWS OF LIFE
Rules for being human
Application for Australian Citizenship
Children’s proverbs
To the citizens of the USA
Signs of your times
Facebook for the chronologically challenged
Making a difference
Go Aussie, go!
25 lessons in life
Why cucumbers are better than men
Why beer is better than women
Personal growth and development courses
Lifetime horoscope
A rotten day
What they wanted
The impossible examination
Do not break the chain
An invitation
The army recruit’s letter
Application for an Australian passport
Take a running jump at yourself!
8 MOMENTS LIKE THESE …
Up, up and away!
All’s well that ends well
The Oozlum bird
The black stump
Yearning for yowies
My boyfriend gave me an apple
A seasonal guide to wives
Henry spruiks Heenzo
Spifler- —— -cate Him!
Tough times
Australian tourism
The naked caravanner
Roaming gnomes
Her Majesty responds
Tigga’s travels
Running naked with the bulls
You need Minties
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
NOTES
PHOTO CREDITS
Campfire in the bush with mates, some tucker and a good yarn, Victoria, 1920s.
INTRODUCTION
AN EDGE LIKE A CHAINSAW
Australians traditionally like their humour irreverent, crude and with very sharp teeth. The ‘politically correct’ is out and the ‘isms’ of sex, race and a swag of other prejudices abound. Pretty well anything and anyone is fair game.
Through the tall tales of the bush, the yarns of Anzac diggers, the antics of larrikins and workplace laughter, our jokes are often at the expense of others, particularly newcomers. Remember the one about the strange whining sound heard at airports as planes from Britain landed? It was eventually realised that this was the whingeing of ‘Pommie’ migrants dissatisfied with what they found in Australia.
On the other hand, we are also adept at ‘taking the piss’ out of ourselves. One of the lampoons in this book is titled ‘Application for Australian Citizenship’, and it begins with this question:
How many slabs can you fit in the back of a Falcon ute while also allowing room for your cattle dog?
And it goes rapidly downhill from there, pillorying our prejudices and preferences.
This tendency could come from the history of modern Australia. The need to deal with an unforgiving environment meant that those from the softer northern hemisphere had to toughen up very quickly to survive, never mind thrive. The fabled Australian lampooning of ‘new chums’ in the nineteenth century and our notorious jokes against ‘new Australians’, ‘reffos’, ‘boat people’ and so on are reprehensible, but perhaps explainable through these circumstances.
Those who are the targets of such humour, of course, are unlikely to see things the same way. But they can and do get their own back through the same process of sending up, making light and generally turning the joke back upon the jokers.
Apart from making us laugh—and, sometimes, cringe—humour can be a great leveller, a safety valve, a consolation or all of these things. It can also be a way to cope with difficult situations, from the everyday trivialities of ‘Minties moments’ to the often-grim realities of war, tensions at work or just with life in general. It is also something that works best when it is shared. Research shows that people laugh much more frequently when they are in a social situation. When Australians share a joke or swap a yarn, we are so pleased with sending things up that we include ourselves in the humour.
And that humour comes in many forms—yarns, anecdotes, jokes, satires, parodies, cartoons, send-ups and even the ways in which we like to amuse ourselves. Even our fabled slang is not only colourful but frequently humorous in itself. ‘In a pig’s arse’, or simply ‘pigs’, is a well-worn expression of disbelief. Just what the rear end of the poor old porker has to do with truth or lies is a mystery, but the expression is inherently humorous. Other terms, such as to ‘perform like a pork chop’ or be as ‘happy as a frog in a sock’ or ‘flat to the boards like a lizard drinking’, like many other Australian idioms, use absurdity to produce the kind of humorous talk we find screamingly funny. At least, it is to us; others often find it incomprehensible, vulgar or just plain weird.
Demanding a ‘fair suck of the sav(eloy)’—or the sauce bottle, according to some—reminds us of another important characteristic of Australian humour: it is fiercely democratic, insisting on a ‘fair go’ and ‘cutting down tall poppies’ at every opportunity. Our parodies and satires often undercut authority figures, whether they be politicians, bureaucrats, experts or just the boss, always fated to be an ‘arsehole’. We relish taking someone or something down a peg or three, particularly the prominent and the pompous.
Most of the humour in this book comes from the rich traditions of Australian laughter. The yarns, jokes and sayings that have been handed down from generation to generation still raise a smile. Others are more recent examples of modern traditions of send-up and satire associated with working life or parodying some aspect of politics, economics or society. Some items are humorous anecdotes and stories that have been turned into literature, such as Henry Lawson’s ‘The Loaded Dog’, or literature turned into folklore, like the Dad and Dave stories based on the writings of Steele Rudd. Some are retellings of humorous incidents and events in history, official and otherwise. They all draw on the same native wit that delights in puncturing pretensions and generally giving anyone and anything a ‘bit of a serve’ or ‘stirring the
possum’ a bit.
We begin with ‘bulldust’, or just ‘bull’. The American humorist Mark Twain was greatly impressed with the Australian ability to generate ‘the most beautiful lies’ when he visited in the 1890s. He was a man who told more than a few tall stories of his own and so was well qualified to judge. Whether Australians enjoy a good lie more than other nations is a debatable point, but we have an impressive repertoire of ‘bullshit’, and it is not all slung in Canberra! The country has been blessed with some prodigious liars and you will find some of their greatest works here.
Australian humour is also populated with an amazing array of quirky ‘characters’. They range through the funny, the cranky, the weird and the wonderful. Some are mythical, like Sandy the shearer. When told that some lambs were for sale at five shillings each, Sandy complained bitterly that this was far too expensive. When the seller said that he could have them for three pounds a dozen, Sandy was overjoyed and bought the lot.
The intelligence-challenged Drongo is another, hopefully, imagined character of this kind. But other figures, like Bea Miles, actually existed and brightened things up for years with her crazy antics. Memorable eccentrics of all kinds, they are a staple of our folklore.
Another type of identity is the hard case. These types are often battlers, like the cocky farmer or the swaggie, though skinflint tycoons like the miserly grazier ‘Hungry’ Tyson are not unknown. They may also be stupendous whingers or ratbags, like the bloke who swapped his wife for a billy and a pup because the dog was an extra good one. Whoever they are, real or fictional, they demonstrate the very angular Australian sense of humour, with its sharp elbows and shouldering, four-square attitude. Tough customers all, their doings have delighted us throughout our history and still raise a laugh today.
One of the distinctive elements of Australian humour revolves around the character of the ‘Digger’, the idealised soldier of the Anzac tradition. While most Digger jokes and japes take place on active duty, they follow the style of bush humour and reflect the biases as well as the delights of the Aussie at war. Digger humour reflects the famous larrikinism and anti-authoritarianism of the Anzacs, from Gallipoli and onwards.
If most of us have to work for a living, we might as well have a laugh about it as often as possible. And we do. Whatever the trade, occupation or profession, there is no shortage of humour about working life, whether we earn our daily crust in the bush, in an office, in a factory or anywhere else. Some yarns and jokes are peculiar to certain industries, trades or workplaces, others are immediately understandable to outsiders. These may be told, suitably adapted, in other industries, like the yarn about the employee who is supposed to keep the workplace clean and tidy. When the boss makes an inspection, he finds the place in a mess and the surfaces thick with dust. He berates the worker, saying, ‘The dust on that table is so thick I could write my name in it.’ The worker agrees, replying, ‘But then, you’re an educated man.’