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"Fair dinkum, Shirl, he had more front than Myers; but I said to him, 'You've got Buckley's of getting into my strides'." (Povah)

A while back I promised – or threatened – to share some of my favorite similes, the creation of which is something of an art form in my birth country, Australia.

Be warned, however. We Australians have a different view of language than our American cousins and some of what follows may confuse or offend. If you are easily either or both, look away now. Australians’ attitudes to their country’s institutions are also very different from yours and our sense of humor can seem pretty dark to an outsider. Australia’s bleak past still has a pervasive influence. It’s not so long ago that convicts drew for the “gallows straw” and he who drew it would murder the other members of his work party, knowing that he’d hang for it.

I’ll start with an easy one. In a previous post, Sheila, my pickle-factory sheila, describes a feller as being “like a drover’s dog”: that is to say, (look away now) all ribs and d – - – k. Incidentally, Australian pickles are not the same as US ones. Oh, some are being re-branded – dill pickles for example – to please a generation that has absorbed at least 50 per cent of its culture from (look away now) teevee, but that doesn’t count.

Here she’s telling Shirl that her date had more front (cheek or effrontery) than Myers department stores and that he had no chance of  removing her…well, you get the idea. The department store of messrs Buckley and Nunn store disappeared generations ago but lives on in the expression: “You’ve got two chances mate: Buckley’s and Nunn”, abbreviated to Buckley’s.

Animals appear a lot in Aussie vernacular. Someone can be off* like a robber’s dog, i.e. act like a fair-weather friend, vanishing at the first sign of adversity, or be smugly selfish, like a butcher’s dog. If you’re extremely lucky you have more ar – e than Jessie the cow, or a brewery horse

Politicians and other spruikers are often described as crayfish, being all arms and legs with a head full of s – - – t.  Staying with crustacea, you can also be off* “like a bucket of prawns [left in the sun]”. “Coming† the raw prawn” is a difficult one. It means trying to put something over on someone and is based on the urban legend of fish-and-chip shop owners slipping raw prawns (especially the small, though delicious, “green” prawns) in with cooked ones to make up weight.

Rodents loom large. Someone can have a “head like a nest full of ugly mice” (more of heads later) or be “like ,or as, a rat with…”. I remember a political broadcaster describing on radio then Prime Minister John Howard’s meeting with a visiting dignitary: “The PM looks like a rat with an umbrella,” he said, his listeners immediately visualizing Howard’s air of smug superiority over his merely mortal countrypersons.

You can also be “as flash as (or like) a rat with a gold tooth”. Flash means ostentatiously showy and the expression is usually reserved for those who don’t know how to behave graciously, especially the newly rich and/or famous. A politician can also be “like a rat up a drainpipe”, disappearing at the first hint of danger or , “cunning as a s – - thouse rat” which needs no explanation.

When you feel like a wallflower, or superfluous to requirements, you’re “standing around like a stale bottle of beer”. Someone can have a “head like a boarding-house cup of tea”, i.e. big and weak, or like a railway pie, hard around the edges, soggy in the middle and with a tendency to dribble.

Australians also like to use slang for slang, especially if the original term offended them, and to abbreviate things, both of which habits confuse foreigners no end.

As an example of the former (you’d better look away for both of these), when the first big post-war influx of Italians came to Western Australia, they were sometimes labeled “Dagoes” by the less charitable and more xenophobic. As the Italians mixed with the general workforce they quickly became “Dings”, less harsh, and in a matter of a year or so that was replaced by the rhyming slang “Highland flings” which quickly became Highlands and then just as quickly disappeared.

Now to the shortening of expressions. You’ll often hear Australians say that someone’s “acting like a pork chop”. What they mean is that he’s in a state of bewilderment or running around like a headless chook or just plain beyond reasoning with – in other words well and truly come down off his ladder. But pork chop? Well the full version is “as welcome [or out of place] as a pork chop in a synagogue”.

To finish – I want to shoot through before the language police arrive – I’d like to give you an example of how quickly words can disappear or change in Australia when they make ordinary, decent people feel uncomfortable – as we learn, in other words. Oh, we have our fair share of ratbags and racists and xenophobes, just like every other nation, but I’m talking about us, people like you and me.

(Look away now.)

Large numbers of Mediterranean immigrants arrived in Australia in the 50s and for a while they were saddled by some with the offensive English term “Wogs”, a word coined during colonial times to describe Egyptians. Many Australian returned soldiers, especially those who’d experienced the fighting in Greece, Crete and Italy, felt uncomfortable with it – Greek and Italian villagers paid dear for sheltering allied soldiers – and its meaning gradually shifted. No-one now would dream of calling a third-generation Aussie named Luigi or Spiros a Wog, no-one you’d want to know, that is. Then, when the children and grandchildren of those immigrants began to use the word in self-satire its sting disappeared. So wog reverted to its other meaning, a virus, usually the flu.

A girl I know was on a working holiday in England – once almost a rite of passage for many Australians – and one day, feeling crook,¶ she rang her employers: “I won’t be in today,” she told them, “I’m in bed with a wog.” She reckons the horrified looks when she next appeared at work were something to behold.

There are few who persistently remain so collectively and myopically xenophobic as the English.

*”Off” can mean leave,as in “I’m off”; or slightly rancid, “This meat’s off”; or offensive or unsavory, “Jeez, Harry, that’s a bit off”; or unwell, “I feel a bit off”; or a s – x – al encounter “We had it off on the back seat of his Holden, Marge” and probably others I didn’t immediately think of.

†To “come” something is to act it: To “come the dill” is to act stupidly. You can also “go” an action; in a heated moment during a footie match, for example, a full back might “go the biff” – or the thump. Then there’s “do”: to “do a perish” means to die, once of thirst in the outback, nowadays by almost any misadventure. To “do the block” means to lose one’s temper.

¶Or butchers (butcher’s hook = crook): Unwell or in its other sense, to “go crook”, to reprimand or launch a tirade.