Australia’s Funniest Yarns

This whopper from Western Australia is attributed to a famous north-western yarn-spinner known as ‘Lippy the Liar’. Like most tellers of such tales, Lippy was a shearer’s cook. He’d grown up, so he said, living with his mother in poverty on a cockatoo farm:

We was so poor we lived on boiled wheat and goannas. The only thing we owned was an old mare.

One bitter cold night Mum and me was sittin’ in front of the fire tryin’ to keep from turnin’ into ice blocks, when we hear a tappin’ on the door. The old mare was standin’ there, shiverin’ and shakin’. Mum said, ‘It’s cruel to make her suffer like this; you’d better put her out of her misery.’

Well, I didn’t want to kill the old mare, but I could see it was no good leavin’ her like that. So I took her down to the shed. We was too poor to have a gun, so I hit her over the head with a sledgehammer. Then I skinned her and pegged out the hide to dry.

About an hour later, we’re back in front of the fire when there’s another knock on the door. I open it and there’s the old mare standin’ there without her hide. Me mother was superstitious and reckoned that the mare wasn’t meant to die and that I’d better do somethin’ for her. So I took her back down the shed and wrapped her up in some sheep skins to keep her warm.

And do you know, that old mare lived another six years. We got five fleeces off her and she won first prize in the crossbred ewes section of the local agricultural show five years runnin’.

A popular bush tale is one also widely told in Britain and America. Usually called ‘The Welded Dog’ or ‘The Split Dog’, the story involves a hunter and his dog, which has a painful but, as it turns out, useful accident.

One day while out hunting kangaroos the hunter wounds a beast and his dog tears off to locate the unfortunate ’roo. The dog either runs through some barbed wire or across an opened tin can left by some careless camper and is cut in half, head to tail. Unperturbed, the hunter then puts the two halves of the dog back together.

Unlikely as this may seem, the story continues with the teller claiming that, in his haste, he put the dog back together the wrong way round, leaving the dog with two legs on the ground and two sticking into the air. This does not slow down the dog. The reconstructed canine continues chasing down the ’roo until he gets too tired, whereupon he simply rolls over and continues running with the other two legs. The story ends with the dog catching the ’roo and biting both ends of the animal at the same time.

Drop bears are mythical creatures of Australian tall-tale tradition that fall from the trees onto unsuspecting dupes walking below. They are often described as koalas with large heads and sharp teeth. Like a good portion of Australian folktales, drop bears are more of a floating motif around which brief narratives can be constructed by the teller for the edification or, in these cases, the trepidation, of audiences, rather than fully formed, elaborate tales.

The following account of a drop bear yarn in action is a classic example of the Australian love of ‘trying on’ a ‘new chum’, or newcomer. It is not unique to Australia, though we do seem to take a particular relish in giving new arrivals a hard time. The account given here includes parenthetical comments from the teller on exactly how to tell such a tall tale for maximum effect on the unsuspecting:

I was working at … the hardware shop in 1987 when some Pommy backpackers came in to get some fly screen to cover the bull bar of their Dodge van to stop the insects clogging the radiator. A bit of a slow day so I helped them attach it. When I was finished I stood up and stated, ‘That’ll stop anything from a quokka to a drop bear.’

‘A what?’

‘Well, a quokka is a small wallaby-looking thing from Western Australia.’

‘Yeah, but what’s a drop bear?’ (Made them ask.)

‘You guys don’t know what a drop bear is?’ (Disbelief at their lack of knowledge.) ‘Okay, they are a carnivorous possum that lives in gumtrees but then drops out the branches, lands on the kangaroo or whatever’s back and rips their throat out with an elongated lower canine tooth. Sort of looks like a feral pig tusk. Then laps the blood up like a vampire bat.’ (A couple of references to existing animals with known characteristics.)

‘My God, have you ever seen one?’

‘Well, not a live one. During the expansion of the 1930s the farmers organised drives because they were killing stock. There is a stuffed one in the museum in town.’ (Offering verification if they want to stay another day. But they had already established they were heading for Mount Isa as soon as I was finished.)

‘They’re not extinct but endangered; just small isolated groups now.’ (More believable that there are only limited numbers as opposed to saying they are everywhere.)

‘Really, whereabouts?’

‘Here in Queensland; well, the Western bits at least.’ (Which direction are they heading? Townsville to Mt Isa.)

‘But how will we know if it’s safe to camp?’ (Concern now; they can’t afford motels.)

‘Oh, well, it’s a local thing. As you’re going through the last town before you stop for the night, just go into any pub and ask what the drop bear situation is like. Bye … have a nice trip.’

The teller of this tale accurately concluded his account with the comment: ‘Jeez, there are some bastards in this world.’

In one of a number of drop bear stories collected in Queensland during the 1980s, the creature is said to have size 10 feet, which it uses to kick in the head of its unfortunate victims. More recently, there have been several bands and a sports team using the name and the little beasts also lead a busy life on the internet, the modern-day home to many older traditions.

Hoop snakes are another species of mythical creature sharing the bush story space with drop bears and giant mozzies. They have been rolling through Australian tradition since at least the mid- to late nineteenth century, and are said to put their tails in their mouths and then roll after their intended victims, as in this typical hoop snake yarn:

Well, there I was, slogging through this timber country, and just as I gets to the top of the hill I almost steps on this bloody great snake. Of course, I jump backwards pretty smartish-like, but the snake comes straight at me, so off I went back down the hill, fast as I could go. Trouble was, it was a hoop snake. Soon as I took off, the bloody thing put its tail in its mouth and came bowling along after me. And it was gaining on me, too—but just as I reached the bottom of the hill, I jumped up and grabbed an overhanging branch. The hoop snake couldn’t stop. It just went bowling along and splashed straight into the creek at the bottom of the hill and drowned. Well, of course it’s a true story. I mean—if it weren’t true the snake would have got me and I wouldn’t be telling you about it, would I?

Hoop snakes can be found on the internet and have also been known in North America since at least the 1780s, in which country they sometimes wriggle into tales of Pecos Bill, the superhuman occupational hero of cowboy legend, similar in some ways to the Australian shearers’ hero, Crooked Mick.

Old bush favourites are the giant mosquitoes who wear hobnail boots, carry off cows and bullocks, and may be seen later picking their teeth with the unfortunate beast’s bones. Sometimes these are located in particular areas and attract a variety of ever-taller tales about their doings, as in the cases of ‘The Mozzies of Giru’ in Queensland and ‘The Hexham Greys’ in New South Wales, as described in an anonymous twentieth-century folk ballad:

Now the Territory has huge Crocodiles,

Queensland the Taipan snake

Wild scrub bulls are the biggest risk,

over in the Western state

But if you’re ever in NSW, ’round Hunter Valley way

Look out for them giant mozzies, the dreaded

Hexham Grey.

They’re the biggest skeetas in the world,

and that’s the dinkum truth

Why, I’ve heard the fence wire snappin’,

when they land on them to roost

Be ready to clear out smartly,

when you hear the dreaded drone

They’ll suck the blood right out ya’ veins,

and the marrow from ya’ bones.

Now some shooters on the swamp one night,

waiting for the ducks to come in

Loaded their guns in earnest

at the sound of flappin’ wings

As the big mob circled overhead

they aimed and blasted away

But by mistake they’d gone and shot,

at a swarm of Hexham Greys.

And a bullocky in the early days, bogged in swampy land

Left his team to try and find, someone to lend a hand

When he returned next morning, he found to his dismay,

His whole darn team had perished, devoured by Hexham Greys.

Oh his swearin’ they say was louder,

than any thunder storm

When he spotted a pair of Hexham Greys,

pickin’ their teeth with his leader’s horns.

And ya’ know, twenty men once disappeared,

to this day they’ve never been found

They’d been workin’ late on a water tank,

by the river at Hexham town.

The skeetas were so savage,

the men climbed in that tank’s insides

Believin’ they’d be protected,

by the corrugated iron.

But when the skeetas bit right through that tank,

determined to get a meal

The apprentice grabbed his hammer,

clinched their beaks onto the steel.

Well it wasn’t long before they felt,

that big tank slowly rise

You see them skeetas lifted it clear from the ground

Then carried ’em all off into the sky.

Well they’re just a few of the facts I’ve heard,

concernin’ the Hexham Grey

Passed on to me by my dear old dad,

who would never lie they say.

So if you’re in NSW, ’round Hunter Valley way

Look out for them giant mozzies,

the dreaded Hexham Grey.

There is a three-metre statue of a grey mosquito outside the Hexham Bowling Club. The locals say that it is a life-sized model of a Hexham Grey. Other giant mozzies may feature in tales of the Speewah.

Fabled figures of bush lore and legend, shearers created a rich body of humorous stories about themselves and aspects of their calling. Many of these stories have a strong tendency to exaggeration, an important aspect of their appeal.

Crooked Mick is the legendary occupational hero of Australian shearers and other outback workers. Mick can shear more sheep, cut more trees and do anything faster than anyone else. Julian Stuart, one of the leaders of the 1891 shearer’s strike in Queensland, provides the earliest known reference to Crooked Mick, writing in The Australian Worker during the 1920s:

I first heard of him on the Barcoo in 1889. We were shearing at Northampton Downs, and we musterers brought in a rosy-cheeked young English Johnny who, in riding from Jericho, the nearest railway station to Blackall, where he was going to edit the new paper, had got lost and found himself at the station, where we were busily engaged disrobing about 150,000 jumbucks.

He was treated with the hospitality of the sheds, which is traditional, and after tea we gathered in the hut—dining room and sleeping accommodation all in one in those days—and proceeded to entertain him.

Whistling Dick played ‘The British Grenadiers’ on his tin whistle; Bungeye Blake sang ‘Little Dog Ben’; Piebald Moore and Cabbagetree Capstick told a common lie or two, but when Dusty Bob got the flute I sat up on my bunk and listened, for I knew him to be the most fluent liar that ever crossed the Darling.

His anecdotes about Crooked Mick began and ended nowhere, and made C.M. appear a superman—with feet so big that he had to go outside to turn around.

It took a large-sized bullock’s hide to make him a pair of moccasins.

He was a heavy smoker. It took one ‘loppy’ (rouseabout) all his time cutting tobacco and filling his pipe.

He worked at such a clip that his shears ran hot, and sometimes he had a half a dozen pairs in the water pot to cool.

He had his fads, and would not shear in sheds that faced north. When at his top, it took three pressers to handle the wool from his blades, and they had to work overtime to keep the bins clear.

He ate two merino sheep each meal—that is, if they were small merinos—but only one and a half when the ration sheep were Leicester crossbred wethers.

His main tally was generally cut on the breakfast run. Anyone who tried to follow him usually spent the balance of the day in the hut.

Between sheds he did fencing. When cutting brigalow posts he used an axe in each hand to save time, and when digging post holes a crowbar in one hand and a shovel in the other.

This slightly idealised depiction gives a good idea of the context in which Crooked Mick tales were told and also the ability of the fluent liar, Dusty Bob, to string otherwise unconnected, fantastic events into a crude but engaging narrative, a practice sometimes noticed among bush yarn-spinners.

Another of many such related incidents is the story of how Mick came to be called ‘Crooked’. As Mick tells it (and there are other versions, of course), he was ploughing one day and it got so hot that the fence-wire melted. When he took the horses to have a drink after the day’s work, he placed one leg in the water bucket. The leg was red hot and when he lifted his other leg and put his weight on the one in the water, it buckled. It’s been that way ever since, which is why Mick walks with a slight limp.

In later life, Mick’s escapades include attempting to stone the crows by throwing Ayer’s Rock (Uluru) at them, harnessing willy-willies to improve the flow of a water windmill, and becoming the ringer of the Speewah shed with an unbeaten tally of 1847 wethers and twelve lambs, all shorn in just one day using hand blades.

The Speewah is closely associated with Crooked Mick. It is an outback never-never land where everything grows in unnaturally large proportions: the pumpkins are so big that they can be used as houses, the trees are so tall that they have to be hinged to let in the sunlight, the sheep are so large that they cannot be shorn without climbing up a ladder. Many strange and wondrous sights can be witnessed on the Speewah, which is variously said to be located out the back of beyond, where the crows fly backwards. The Speewah is so hot in summer that its freezing point is set at 99 degrees. It is so cold in the winter that even the mirages freeze solid and the grasshoppers grow fur coats to keep themselves warm. Droughts are not over until the people of the Speewah are able to have water in their tea.

The creatures of the Speewah form a strange and exotic menagerie that includes the small Ker-Ker bird, so named from its habit of flying across the Speewah in summertime crying ‘ker-kerkripes, it’s hot!’ Then there is the Oozlum bird that flies tail-first and in smaller and smaller circles until, moaning, it disappears inside itself head-first. Hoop snakes and giant mosquitoes are commonplace on the Speewah, as are giant emus, wombats, crocodiles and boars. The ’roos are so big that they make the emus look like canaries and the rabbits so thick, large and cunning that Mick had to go to war to save himself.

As well as Mick himself, the Speewah is peopled with other larger than life characters. These include Prickly Pear Polly, so plain that a cocky farmer hired her as a scarecrow. She was so good at scaring the birds that they even started returning the corn they’d stolen two seasons before. Another was Old Harry, the building worker with one wooden leg. He came home from work one night and his wife noticed that he only had one leg left. Harry looked down and was amazed to discover that she was correct. No idea how he’d lost it, just hadn’t noticed. Irish Paddy was so good at digging post-holes that he would wear his six-foot crowbar down to the size of a darning needle. There was Bungeye Bill the gambler and Greasy George, the third assistant shearer’s cook, a man who rarely bathed and was so greasy that your eyes slid right off him as you looked.

The Speewah shearing shed itself was said to be so large that it needed two men and a boy standing on each other’s shoulders to see the whole of it and the boss would take a day or more to ride its length on horseback. Traditions of outsize shearing sheds and stations featuring men of the stamp of Crooked Mick are also found under names like Big Burrawong and Big Burramugga (WA), suggesting that the tales of Mick’s doings and those of the mythic stations may have been independent.

A number of Australian folklorists and writers recall speaking and corresponding with individuals who told Crooked Mick tales or knew of him and his exploits on the Speewah, suggesting a strong currency in oral as well as literary tradition. On the other hand, collections of shearer anecdotes made in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries make no reference to these tales, suggesting that Crooked Mick may be having a tough time surviving change, despite his prowess.

A perennial favourite of the Australian yarning tradition is the one-upmanship of American ‘skiters’, as boasters used to be called. There are many tales of this type; this one was told in World War I:

In a London café last month a soldier who hailed from the other side of Oodnadatta fell into a friendly argument with an American, as to the relative greatness of the two countries.

‘Wal,’ said the Yankee, ‘that bit o’ sunbaked mud yew call Australia ain’t a bad bit o’ sile in its way, and it’ll be worth expectoratin’ on when it wakes up and discovers it’s alive, but when yew come to compare it with Amurrica, wal, yer might ’swell put a spot o’ dust alongside a diamond. Y’see, sonny, we kinder do things in Amurrica; we don’t sit round like an egg in its shell waitin’ fer someone tew come along and crack it; no, we git hustling’ till all Amurrica’s one kernormous dust storm kicked up by our citizens raking in their dollars. Why, there’s millions of Amurricans who ’ave tew climb to the top of their stack o’ dollars on a ladder every morning, so’s they ken see the sun rise. We’re some people!’

The Australian took a hitch in his belt, put his cigarette behind his ear, and observed:

‘Dollars! Do yer only deal in five bobs over there! We deal in nothin’ but quids in Australia. Anything smaller than a quid we throw away. Too much worry to count, and it spoils the shape of yer pockets. The schoolboys ’ave paper-chases with pound notes. Money in Australia! Why, you can see the business blokes comin’ outer their offices every day with wads of bank notes like blankets under each arm. I remember before I left Adelaide all the citizens was makin’ for the banks with the day’s takin’s, when a stiff gale sprung up pretty sudden. Them citizens let go their wads ter ’old their ’ats on and immediately the air was full of bank notes—mostly ’undred quiders. Yer couldn’t see the sun fer paper. The corporation ’ad to hire a thousand men ter sweep them bank notes in a ’eap and burn ’em. Dinkum!’

This is an update of an old bush yarn from the days before septic tanks and sewers. Back then, the traditional dunny was a hole in the ground. Every week or two, as the hole began to fill, the usual practice was to pour kerosene down to disguise the smell and aid decomposition. One day someone mistakenly poured petrol down the hole and the next person to use the dunny dropped his lighted cigarette butt down. The resulting explosion variously blows up the dunny, its contents and the unfortunate smoker.

In the modern version, the woman of the house is trying to exterminate an insect, often a cockroach. It won’t die by the normal methods, so she throws it into the toilet bowl and gives it a good spray of insecticide. Immediately afterwards, the husband rushes in with an urgent need to use the convenience. Comfortably seated and enjoying the relief along with a cigarette, he finishes smoking and drops the lighted cigarette butt into the bowl. Still filled with the flammable residue of the insecticide and other gaseous elements, the bowl immediately ignites and burns his backside.

With badly burned rear and genitals, the husband is in need of hospitalisation. When the ambulance arrives, the ambulance men are so amused that they cannot stop laughing. They get the husband onto the stretcher, but on the way out their laughter becomes uncontrollable. They drop the stretcher. The burned husband hits the concrete floor and breaks his pelvis.

The continued popularity of this fable is perhaps due to its moral—even the most mundane domestic places and activities can be dangerous. Old though it is, the exploding dunny continues to amuse us.

The well-dressed ’roo is, not surprisingly, an old favourite, and probably derives from bush yarns about a kangaroo mimicking the actions of humans. It was probably not new when it was published in a 1902 book of humour titled Aboriginalities. The story was also told in the 1950s about visiting English cricket sides and, in the mid-1980s, about an Italian America’s Cup team in Western Australia. It has been frequently aired in the Australian press.

A group of tourists (sometimes Japanese, sometimes American) is being driven through the outback to see the sights. The bus runs down a kangaroo and stops to assess the damage. The tourists are all excited at this bit of authentic Australiana and rush out to have a look. After the cameras have been clicking for a while, someone gets the bright idea of standing the dead ’roo up against a tree and putting his sports jacket on the animal for a bit of a different souvenir photo.

Just as the tourist is about to snap his photo, the ’roo, only stunned by the bus, returns to consciousness and leaps off into the scrub, still wearing the tourist’s expensive jacket, which also contains his wallet, money, credit cards, passport …

Despite its Australian pedigree, the tale is not unique to these shores. The theme of poetic justice meted out to the human by a supposedly dumb animal has many international variations, including the American bear that walks off into Yellowstone Park carrying a tourist’s baby and the deer hunter who loses his expensive rifle by placing it in the antlers of a deer he has just shot. Like the ’roo, the deer is only stunned and races off with the weapon still fixed in its horns. Versions of the tale are also told in Germany and Canada.

A rabbit-o, new to the task of catching bunnies, was not having too much luck. No matter what he did he couldn’t seem to bag a single bunny. The old hands were doing well, so the new bloke decided to ask them for some advice. They told him to get himself a rabbit, tie a stick of gelignite to its tail, light the ‘gelly’ and send the rabbit down the nearest burrow. This would guarantee a big, if messy, haul.

The new bloke thought that this was a fine idea. The only trouble was, he couldn’t catch a rabbit in the first place to start off. So he decided to buy himself a rabbit at the pet store in town. Back in the bush, he gets the rabbit out of its cage, ties the gelly to it, lights the fuse and points it towards the burrows. Off the rabbit goes. But, being a pet-shop rabbit, it had been born in captivity and didn’t know what to do in the wild. It circled round and ran back towards the bloke, fuse sputtering, and scurried straight underneath his expensive new jalopy, blowing the whole thing to buggery.

This is another old bush yarn modernised. It also has a lengthy history as an international tale, being known at least as early as the Middle Ages in Europe, and also in India. Like many other such widely distributed tales, it has been traced to the Bible, though its more modern versions tend towards the ‘biter bitten’ category of stories. In the updated versions, it is usually a couple of blokes, often out hunting, who tie the gelignite to the rabbit out of cruelty. The rabbit, which is a wild one rather than a tame one, is terrified and does the same thing as the traditional bunny, running under the blokes’ $50,000 four-wheel-drive where, of course, it explodes.

Other modern versions of this are reported widely in North America and in New Zealand, and it often pops up in the press when journalists are desperate to fill a few empty column centimetres. There is even an exploding fish variation, sometimes said to be a shark. In Queensland they seem to prefer exploding pigs that write off the ute in exactly the same way. But as far as the Australian renditions, old and new, are concerned, Henry Lawson knew the yarn and used it in his well-known short story ‘The Loaded Dog’.

Dave Regan, Jim Bently, and Andy Page were sinking a shaft at Stony Creek in search of a rich gold quartz reef which was supposed to exist in the vicinity. There is always a rich reef supposed to exist in the vicinity; the only questions are whether it is ten feet or hundreds beneath the surface, and in which direction. They had struck some pretty solid rock, also water which kept them baling. They used the old-fashioned blasting-powder and time-fuse. They’d make a sausage or cartridge of blasting-powder in a skin of strong calico or canvas, the mouth sewn and bound round the end of the fuse; they’d dip the cartridge in melted tallow to make it water-tight, get the drill-hole as dry as possible, drop in the cartridge with some dry dust, and wad and ram with stiff clay and broken brick. Then they’d light the fuse and get out of the hole and wait. The result was usually an ugly pot-hole in the bottom of the shaft and half a barrow-load of broken rock.

There was plenty of fish in the creek, fresh-water bream, cod, cat-fish, and tailers. The party were fond of fish, and Andy and Dave of fishing. Andy would fish for three hours at a stretch if encouraged by a ‘nibble’ or a ‘bite’ now and then say once in twenty minutes. The butcher was always willing to give meat in exchange for fish when they caught more than they could eat; but now it was winter, and these fish wouldn’t bite. However, the creek was low, just a chain of muddy water-holes, from the hole with a few bucketfuls in it to the sizable pool with an average depth of six or seven feet, and they could get fish by baling out the smaller holes or muddying up the water in the larger ones till the fish rose to the surface. There was the cat-fish, with spikes growing out of the sides of its head, and if you got pricked you’d know it, as Dave said. Andy took off his boots, tucked up his trousers, and went into a hole one day to stir up the mud with his feet, and he knew it. Dave scooped one out with his hand and got pricked, and he knew it too; his arm swelled, and the pain throbbed up into his shoulder, and down into his stomach too, he said, like a toothache he had once, and kept him awake for two nights only the toothache pain had a ‘burred edge’, Dave said.

Dave got an idea.

‘Why not blow the fish up in the big water-hole with a cartridge?’ he said.

‘I’ll try it.’

He thought the thing out and Andy Page worked it out. Andy usually put Dave’s theories into practice if they were practicable, or bore the blame for the failure and the chaffing of his mates if they weren’t.

He made a cartridge about three times the size of those they used in the rock. Jim Bently said it was big enough to blow the bottom out of the river. The inner skin was of stout calico; Andy stuck the end of a six-foot piece of fuse well down in the powder and bound the mouth of the bag firmly to it with whipcord. The idea was to sink the cartridge in the water with the open end of the fuse attached to a float on the surface, ready for lighting. Andy dipped the cartridge in melted bees’-wax to make it water-tight. ‘We’ll have to leave it some time before we light it,’ said Dave, ‘to give the fish time to get over their scare when we put it in, and come nosing round again; so we’ll want it well water-tight.’

Round the cartridge Andy, at Dave’s suggestion, bound a strip of sail canvas that they used for making water-bags to increase the force of the explosion, and round that he pasted layers of stiff brown paper on the plan of the sort of fireworks we called ‘gun-crackers’. He let the paper dry in the sun, then he sewed a covering of two thicknesses of canvas over it, and bound the thing from end to end with stout fishing-line. Dave’s schemes were elaborate, and he often worked his inventions out to nothing. The cartridge was rigid and solid enough now—a formidable bomb; but Andy and Dave wanted to be sure. Andy sewed on another layer of canvas, dipped the cartridge in melted tallow, twisted a length of fencing-wire round it as an afterthought, dipped it in tallow again, and stood it carefully against a tent-peg, where he’d know where to find it, and wound the fuse loosely round it. Then he went to the camp-fire to try some potatoes which were boiling in their jackets in a billy, and to see about frying some chops for dinner. Dave and Jim were at work in the claim that morning.

They had a big black young retriever dog or rather an overgrown pup, a big, foolish, four-footed mate, who was always slobbering round them and lashing their legs with his heavy tail that swung round like a stock-whip. Most of his head was usually a red, idiotic, slobbering grin of appreciation of his own silliness. He seemed to take life, the world, his two-legged mates, and his own instinct as a huge joke. He’d retrieve anything: he carted back most of the camp rubbish that Andy threw away. They had a cat that died in hot weather, and Andy threw it a good distance away in the scrub; and early one morning the dog found the cat, after it had been dead a week or so, and carried it back to camp, and laid it just inside the tent-flaps, where it could best make its presence known when the mates should rise and begin to sniff suspiciously in the sickly smothering atmosphere of the summer sunrise. He used to retrieve them when they went in swimming; he’d jump in after them, and take their hands in his mouth, and try to swim out with them, and scratch their naked bodies with his paws. They loved him for his good-heartedness and his foolishness, but when they wished to enjoy a swim they had to tie him up in camp.

He watched Andy with great interest all the morning making the cartridge, and hindered him considerably, trying to help; but about noon he went off to the claim to see how Dave and Jim were getting on, and to come home to dinner with them. Andy saw them coming, and put a panful of mutton-chops on the fire. Andy was cook to-day; Dave and Jim stood with their backs to the fire, as Bushmen do in all weathers, waiting till dinner should be ready. The retriever went nosing round after something he seemed to have missed.

Andy’s brain still worked on the cartridge; his eye was caught by the glare of an empty kerosene-tin lying in the bushes, and it struck him that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to sink the cartridge packed with clay, sand, or stones in the tin, to increase the force of the explosion. He may have been all out, from a scientific point of view, but the notion looked all right to him. Jim Bently, by the way, wasn’t interested in their ‘damned silliness’. Andy noticed an empty treacle-tin, the sort with the little tin neck or spout soldered on to the top for the convenience of pouring out the treacle, and it struck him that this would have made the best kind of cartridge-case: he would only have had to pour in the powder, stick the fuse in through the neck, and cork and seal it with bees’-wax. He was turning to suggest this to Dave, when Dave glanced over his shoulder to see how the chops were doing and bolted. He explained afterwards that he thought he heard the pan spluttering extra, and looked to see if the chops were burning.

Jim Bently looked behind and bolted after Dave. Andy stood stock-still, staring after them. ‘Run, Andy! run!’ they shouted back at him. ‘Run!!! Look behind you, you fool!’ Andy turned slowly and looked, and there, close behind him, was the retriever with the cartridge in his mouth wedged into his broadest and silliest grin. And that wasn’t all. The dog had come round the fire to Andy, and the loose end of the fuse had trailed and waggled over the burning sticks into the blaze; Andy had slit and nicked the firing end of the fuse well, and now it was hissing and spitting properly.

Andy’s legs started with a jolt; his legs started before his brain did, and he made after Dave and Jim. And the dog followed Andy.

Dave and Jim were good runners, Jim the best for a short distance; Andy was slow and heavy, but he had the strength and the wind and could last. The dog leapt and capered round him, delighted as a dog could be to find his mates, as he thought, on for a frolic. Dave and Jim kept shouting back, ‘Don’t foller us! Don’t foller us, you coloured fool!’ but Andy kept on, no matter how they dodged. They could never explain, any more than the dog, why they followed each other, but so they ran, Dave keeping in Jim’s track in all its turnings, Andy after Dave, and the dog circling round Andy—the live fuse swishing in all directions and hissing and spluttering and stinking. Jim yelling to Dave not to follow him, Dave shouting to Andy to go in another direction to ‘spread out’, and Andy roaring at the dog to go home.

Then Andy’s brain began to work, stimulated by the crisis: he tried to get a running kick at the dog, but the dog dodged; he snatched up sticks and stones and threw them at the dog and ran on again. The retriever saw that he’d made a mistake about Andy, and left him and bounded after Dave. Dave, who had the presence of mind to think that the fuse’s time wasn’t up yet, made a dive and a grab for the dog, caught him by the tail, and as he swung round snatched the cartridge out of his mouth and flung it as far as he could: the dog immediately bounded after it and retrieved it. Dave roared and cursed at the dog, who seeing that Dave was offended, left him and went after Jim, who was well ahead. Jim swung to a sapling and went up it like a native bear; it was a young sapling, and Jim couldn’t safely get more than ten or twelve feet from the ground. The dog laid the cartridge, as carefully as if it was a kitten, at the foot of the sapling, and capered and leaped and whooped joyously round under Jim. The big pup reckoned that this was part of the lark, he was all right now, it was Jim who was out for a spree.

The fuse sounded as if it were going a mile a minute. Jim tried to climb higher and the sapling bent and cracked. Jim fell on his feet and ran. The dog swooped on the cartridge and followed. It all took but a very few moments. Jim ran to a digger’s hole, about ten feet deep, and dropped down into it—landing on soft mud—and was safe. The dog grinned sardonically down on him, over the edge, for a moment, as if he thought it would be a good lark to drop the cartridge down on Jim.

‘Go away, Tommy,’ said Jim feebly, ‘go away.’

The dog bounded off after Dave, who was the only one in sight now; Andy had dropped behind a log, where he lay flat on his face, having suddenly remembered a picture of the Russo-Turkish war with a circle of Turks lying flat on their faces (as if they were ashamed) round a newly-arrived shell.

There was a small hotel or shanty on the creek, on the main road, not far from the claim. Dave was desperate, the time flew much faster in his stimulated imagination than it did in reality, so he made for the shanty. There were several casual Bushmen on the verandah and in the bar; Dave rushed into the bar, banging the door to behind him. ‘My dog!’ he gasped, in reply to the astonished stare of the publican, ‘The blanky retriever—he’s got a live cartridge in his mouth—’

The retriever, finding the front door shut against him, had bounded round and in by the back way, and now stood smiling in the doorway leading from the passage, the cartridge still in his mouth and the fuse spluttering. They burst out of that bar. Tommy bounded first after one and then after another, for, being a young dog, he tried to make friends with everybody.

The Bushmen ran round corners, and some shut themselves in the stable. There was a new weather-board and corrugated-iron kitchen and wash-house on piles in the back-yard, with some women washing clothes inside. Dave and the publican bundled in there and shut the door, the publican cursing Dave and calling him a crimson fool, in hurried tones, and wanting to know what the hell he came here for.

The retriever went in under the kitchen, amongst the piles, but, luckily for those inside, there was a vicious yellow mongrel cattle-dog sulking and nursing his nastiness under there, a sneaking, fighting, thieving canine, whom neighbours had tried for years to shoot or poison. Tommy saw his danger, he’d had experience from this dog, and started out and across the yard, still sticking to the cartridge. Half-way across the yard the yellow dog caught him and nipped him. Tommy dropped the cartridge, gave one terrified yell, and took to the Bush. The yellow dog followed him to the fence and then ran back to see what he had dropped.

Nearly a dozen other dogs came from round all the corners and under the buildings, spidery, thievish, coldblooded kangaroo-dogs, mongrel sheep- and cattle-dogs, vicious black and yellow dogs that slip after you in the dark, nip your heels, and vanish without explaining and yapping, yelping small fry. They kept at a respectable distance round the nasty yellow dog, for it was dangerous to go near him when he thought he had found something which might be good for a dog to eat. He sniffed at the cartridge twice, and was just taking a third cautious sniff when—

It was very good blasting powder, a new brand that Dave had recently got up from Sydney; and the cartridge had been excellently well made. Andy was very patient and painstaking in all he did, and nearly as handy as the average sailor with needles, twine, canvas, and rope.

Bushmen say that that kitchen jumped off its piles and on again. When the smoke and dust cleared away, the remains of the nasty yellow dog were lying against the paling fence of the yard, looking as if he had been kicked into a fire by a horse and afterwards rolled in the dust under a barrow, and finally thrown against the fence from a distance. Several saddle-horses, which had been ‘hanging-up’ round the verandah, were galloping wildly down the road in clouds of dust, with broken bridle-reins flying; and from a circle round the outskirts, from every point of the compass in the scrub, came the yelping of dogs. Two of them went home, to the place where they were born, thirty miles away, and reached it the same night and stayed there; it was not till towards evening that the rest came back cautiously to make inquiries. One was trying to walk on two legs, and most of ’em looked more or less singed; and a little, singed, stumpy-tailed dog, who had been in the habit of hopping the back half of him along on one leg, had reason to be glad that he’d saved up the other leg all those years, for he needed it now. There was one old one-eyed cattle-dog round that shanty for years afterwards, who couldn’t stand the smell of a gun being cleaned. He it was who had taken an interest, only second to that of the yellow dog, in the cartridge. Bushmen said that it was amusing to slip up on his blind side and stick a dirty ramrod under his nose: he wouldn’t wait to bring his solitary eye to bear, he’d take to the Bush and stay out all night.

For half an hour or so after the explosion there were several Bushmen round behind the stable who crouched, doubled up, against the wall, or rolled gently on the dust, trying to laugh without shrieking. There were two white women in hysterics at the house, and a half-caste rushing aimlessly round with a dipper of cold water. The publican was holding his wife tight and begging her between her squawks, to ‘hold up for my sake, Mary, or I’ll lam the life out of ye’.

Dave decided to apologise later on, ‘when things had settled a bit’, and went back to camp. And the dog that had done it all, ‘Tommy’, the great, idiotic mongrel retriever, came slobbering round Dave and lashing his legs with his tail, and trotted home after him, smiling his broadest, longest, and reddest smile of amiability, and apparently satisfied for one afternoon with the fun he’d had.

Andy chained the dog up securely, and cooked some more chops, while Dave went to help Jim out of the hole.

And most of this is why, for years afterwards, lanky, easy-going Bushmen, riding lazily past Dave’s camp, would cry, in a lazy drawl and with just a hint of the nasal twang—

‘’El-lo, Da-a-ve! How’s the fishin’ getting on, Da-a-ve?’

There is a strange surge in the number of babies born around the same time in a particular region. The explanation for this is that there was a power blackout nine months earlier. This meant that people were not able to spend the night in front of the ‘telly’ and so had to amuse themselves in more traditional ways.

This story has been circulating in Australia since at least the 1960s. It was not new then and, in one version or another, has been recorded throughout Australia and around the world.

Instead of a power blackout, the reason for the nocturnal hijinks is often the regular and noisy arrival of the night train. Folklorist Bill Scott has a superb version of this given to him in 1978. His version had an appropriate bureaucratic setting:

The Census Office was puzzling over the figures of the recent Census in relation to the north coast NSW town of Kyogle. They couldn’t work out why this place had a birth rate three times the national average. They sent an officer to investigate. He found the school crammed with kids and even a special new wing added to the maternity hospital. After a few days, the officer worked it out.

The Kyogle Mail used to pass through town about 4.30 every morning, blowing its whistle first at the level crossing on the north side of town and waking everyone up. Just as they were dozing off again the train would cross the crossing on the south side of town and blow its whistle again. By then just about everyone in town was wide-awake. It was too early to get up, but …

Folklorists in Britain, America and Australia have turned up many other versions of the same tale. In South Africa the story is so well known in one particular town that the local offspring are known far and wide as ‘train babies’. That train also ran through Michigan during the 1950s, through the New York City blackout of 1965 and the 1990 San Francisco Bay Area earthquake. It is still running somewhere.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Missouri in 1835. After looking out for himself from the age of twelve, he eventually became the great American writer and humorist known as ‘Mark Twain’. His pen name derived from his days as a riverboat pilot where the cry ‘mark twain’ was the pilot’s call to indicate a depth of two fathoms beneath a boat. By the early 1890s, Twain had made and lost a couple of fortunes and was repairing his finances through a world speaking tour. When the great American man visited Australia in 1895, he left a flurry of witty remarks and quips in his wake. Many of them are as revealing and funny now as they were back then. On arriving in Sydney, Twain was interviewed by a local journalist and declared:

My greatest efforts are directed towards doing the world with as little hard work as possible. I frankly admit that in regard to most things I am phenomenally lazy. I have travelled from the Rocky Mountains to Jerusalem in order to escape hard work, and I have come to Australia with the same idea.

We entered and cast anchor, and in the morning went oh-ing and ah-ing in admiration up through the crooks and turns of the spacious and beautiful harbor—a harbor which is the darling of Sydney and the wonder of the world. It is not surprising that the people are proud of it, nor that they put their enthusiasm into eloquent words. A returning citizen asked me what I thought of it, and I testified with a cordiality which I judged would be up to the market rate. I said it was beautiful—superbly beautiful. Then by a natural impulse I gave God the praise. The citizen did not seem altogether satisfied. He said:

‘It is beautiful, of course it’s beautiful—the Harbor; but that isn’t all of it, it’s only half of it; Sydney’s the other half, and it takes both of them together to ring the supremacy-bell. God made the Harbor, and that’s all right; but Satan made Sydney.’

Of course I made an apology; and asked him to convey it to his friend. He was right about Sydney being half of it. It would be beautiful without Sydney, but not above half as beautiful as it is now, with Sydney added.

But travelling by train across the New South Wales–Victoria border, Twain was stunned to discover that he and all the passengers needed to change trains due to the different gauge tracks in each colony. His much-quoted comment was, ‘Think of the paralysis of intellect that gave that idea birth.’

The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be difficult to overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies. Overshadows them? I might almost say it blots them out. Each of them gets attention, but not everybody’s; each of them evokes interest, but not everybody’s; each of them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody’s; in each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter of habit and custom, and another part of it is official and perfunctory. Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an enthusiasm which are universal—and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup Day is supreme—it has no rival. I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, which can be named by that large name—Supreme. I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, whose approach fires the whole land with a conflagration of conversation and preparation and anticipation and jubilation. No day save this one; but this one does it.

With a writer’s ear for everyday speech, Twain gently sent up the Australian accent, reporting his hotel chambermaid’s morning greeting: ‘The tyble is set, and here is the piper [paper]; and if the lydy is ready I’ll tell the wyter to bring up the breakfast.’

He was also fascinated by the term ‘My word’, seemingly in vogue at the time: ‘The first time I heard an Australian say it, it was positively thrilling,’ he wrote, and suggested that Americans import it for their own use.

In Adelaide, Twain was impressed by the number and variety of faiths and the various churches, temples and chapels in which they worshipped:

She has a population, as per the latest census, of only 320,000-odd, and yet her varieties of religion indicate the presence within her borders of samples of people from pretty nearly every part of the globe you can think of. Tabulated, these varieties of religion make a remarkable show. One would have to go far to find its match.

After a table of statistics recording the numbers of the various faiths professed in Adelaide, Twain arrived at a total of just over 320,000, including 1719 ‘Other Religions’, which included:

Agnostics, Atheists, Believers in Christ, Buddhists, Calvinists, Christadelphians, Christians, Christ’s Chapel, Christian Israelites, Christian Socialists, Church of God, Cosmopolitans, Deists, Evangelists, Exclusive Brethren, Free Church, Free Methodists, Freethinkers, Followers of Christ, Gospel Meetings, Greek Church, Infidels, Maronites, Memnonists, Moravians, Mormons, Naturalists, Orthodox, Others (indefinite), Pagans, Pantheists, Plymouth Brethren, Rationalists, Reformers, Secularists, Seventh-day Adventists, Shakers, Shintoists, Spiritualists, Theosophists, Town (City) Mission, Welsh Church, Huguenot, Hussite, Zoroastrians, Zwinglian.

About 64 roads to the other world. You see how healthy the religious atmosphere is. Anything can live in it. Agnostics, Atheists, Freethinkers, Infidels, Mormons, Pagans, Indefinites, they are all there. And all the big sects of the world can do more than merely live in it: they can spread, flourish, prosper. All except the Spiritualists and the Theosophists. That is the most curious feature of this curious table. What is the matter with the specter? Why do they puff him away? He is a welcome toy everywhere else in the world.

Twain visited the goldfields of Victoria and in Ballarat he thought the Eureka Stockade ‘the finest thing in Australasian history. It was a revolution—small in size; but great politically; it was a strike for liberty, a struggle for a principle, a stand against injustice and oppression’ and ‘another instance of a victory won by a lost battle’.

Hobart has a peculiarity—it is the neatest town that the sun shines on; and I incline to believe that it is also the cleanest. However that may be, its supremacy in neatness is not to be questioned. There cannot be another town in the world that has no shabby exteriors; no rickety gates and fences, no neglected houses crumbling to ruin, no crazy and unsightly sheds, no weed-grown front-yards of the poor, no back-yards littered with tin cans and old boots and empty bottles, no rubbish in the gutters, no clutter on the sidewalks, no outer-borders fraying out into dirty lanes and tin-patched huts. No, in Hobart all the aspects are tidy, and all a comfort to the eye; the modestest cottage looks combed and brushed, and has its vines, its flowers, its neat fence, its neat gate, its comely cat asleep on the window ledge.

Australian history is almost always picturesque; indeed, it is so curious and strange, that it is itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer, and so it pushes the other novelties into second and third place. It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful of lies. And all of a fresh new sort, no mouldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises, and adventures, and incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true, they all happened.

Rivalry between Australians, the British and the Americans has long been treated for laughs and there is a never-ending array of yarns and jokes on this theme. Here are just a few:

Two Aussies on leave from France were occupying a first-class non-smoking compartment of an English train, when an irascible old bloke blew in. The old killjoy got nasty because one of the Aussies was smoking, and without any preliminary diplomatic negotiations handed the cigar-puffer an ultimatum that he would have him removed from the compartment if he didn’t stop smoking. This annoyed the Aussie, and he counter-attacked behind a strong smoke barrage. At the next station Mr Killjoy called a porter and read out the Aussie’s crime sheet:

‘This man is smoking in a non-smoking compartment.’ He demanded that the Aussie should be removed. The porter told the Aussie that he would either have to stop smoking or stop travelling in a non-smoker.

‘Well, I plead guilty to smoking in a non-smoker,’ said the Aussie, ‘but this old nark has no kick coming against me. He’s travelling first on a second-class ticket!’

The porter demanded old Killjoy’s ticket and found that the Aussie’s statement was correct. Exit old Killjoy.

‘How did you know he was travelling wrong class?’ asked the second Aussie later.

‘Oh, I saw the ticket sticking out of his vest pocket,’ replied the other, between puffs, ‘and it was the same colour as my own.’

Sometimes these yarns involved the ability to understand, or not, the ‘great Australian slanguage’:

THE YANK: ‘Say, Guy, how far to battle?’

AUSSIE: ‘Well, sonny, I guess it’s about five kilos. Just “pencil and chalk” straight along this “frog and toad” till you come to the “romp and ramp” on the “Johnny Horner”. Then dive across that “bog orange” field till you run into a barrage. That lobs you right there. D’ye compree?’

Being able to speak the right lingo could mean the difference between life and death, as highlighted in an Australian yarn:

The weary pongo was wending his way frigidly along the duckboards when he encountered a sentry.

‘Halt! password?’ The weary one carefully searched his thought-box, but couldn’t recall the required word. He remembered, however, that it was the name of a place in Australia, so he began to run through all the places he knew, in the hope of striking it: ‘Bondi, Woolloomooloo, Budgaree, Warangatta, Cootamundra, Murrumbidgee, Wagga Wagga, We Wa.’

‘Pass on, Digger,’ interrupted the sentry, ‘you’ve got the dinkum talk!’

The dialogue between the American and the Australian was a popular form of Digger humour. Possibly because the Australian always tops the exaggerations of the American. This one was already old when it was first published in 1917:

A Yankee and an Aussie were having a quiet drink in the canteen. After a while the conversation came around to the subject of wildlife. ‘Your dingo is nowhere near as savage as our coyote’, the American claimed. ‘And our cougars can outdo any of your wild beasts.’

‘Is that right?’ said the Aussie.

‘Yeah. Take our rattlesnake. It bites you and you die in under two minutes.’

‘Oh, that’s nothing,’ replied the Aussie. ‘Our taipans come at you so fast you’re dead two minutes before they bite you.’

It was at a military hospital in England, and the convalescents were sitting in the garden chatting. The topic was cold weather. The American had the floor.

‘Wal, I reckon it was a bit cold in those French trenches this winter. But shucks! It was a heat wave compared with some of the cold snaps we get in America. Why, look here, children; I remember one day over’n New York it got so darned cold, kinder suddent like, that everybody’s whiskers freezed, and the people had ter shave themselves with dynamite. Of course the explosions shook up ther old city a trifle, but, by George Washington, some whickers got shifted! Another day a cold jerk put in without notice and freezed up all the whisky. The bartenders had to go about with axes chippin’ nobblers off the whisky blocks. Some cold, I reckon!’

An Australian scratched his right ear with a crutch, and put in:

‘Dunno much about cold in Australia, but I ken talk heat a bit. It does warm up over there. Now, once I was humpin’ me bluey in ther bush. A heat wave came up. You could see it comin’ in the distance by ther kangaroos ’oppin’ about with their tails on fire. I picked up a bit of old fencin’ wire and lit me pipe with it. That was a sure sign too. In a few minutes that wave struck me, dealt with me, and then passed on, leavin’ me with only me pocket knife and a quart pot to go on with. Of course I was new to the bush, or I couldn’t have felt it so much. I met another bloke soon after. He was eatin’ a baked goanna he’d picked up. I sez ‘Warm, mate, eh?’ He sez, ‘Oh, it’s been just nice to-day. Reckon it’ll be fairly ’ot to-morrow.’

Overheard on Townsville beach one night in 1944—a Yank calls to an Aussie: ‘Hey, Buddy, break down the language! I’d like you to know I have a lady with me here!’

The Aussie calls back to the Yank: ‘And what the hell d’ya think I have here—a ruddy seagull?’

The casual Aussie dryly undercutting the pretensions of other nationalities—especially Americans—is a strong theme in our humour. This version has been around for a while; it was circulated in an internet version in America. Most of the people who commented on it didn’t get the joke, an indication of the differences between what Australians and Americans find funny. What’s the matter with them?