Jim Haynes: Australians are lightweight drinkers and other furphies – The Australian Financial Review

Despard, who famously led a disastrous campaign in the Maori Wars, also gave an order that prohibited citizens from walking on any part of the grass-covered area in front of the barracks when listening to the band play. This had been the towns chief entertainment for many years.

The 99th were so annoyed when Despard stopped their grog ration that they forgot their obligations to their Queen and country, by refusing to obey the lawful commands of their Officers, or to perform any further duty, and went on strike.

The barque Tasmania was chartered and 400 men and officers of the 11th Regiment in Hobart embarked for Sydney to disarm the mutineers of the 99th Regiment.

An offshore gale kept the vessel from entering the Harbour for seven days but eventually the 11th Regiment arrived in Sydney on January 8, 1846 and marched four-deep, with fixed bayonets, along George Street with the band playing Paddy Will You Now until they entered the Barrack Square to a hearty welcome and cheers from the 99th Regiment and their families, together with as many citizens as could fit into the barrack grounds.

Thus ended the mutiny of the 99th Regiment. The grog ration was restored and Sydneys citizens were again allowed to walk on the grass in front of Barrack Square, and listen to the band play on Thursday afternoons.

One thing to note here is that the 99th were a British regiment!

Limits on the sale of alcohol created the 6 oclock swill.

One of the most common myths about Australians is that we are great beer drinkers. This is simply not true anymore. Before the advent of refrigeration, rum and other spirits were the popular drinks, along with some styles of beer that are drunk at room temperature, like ale and porter.

After it became possible to refrigerate beer, we became prone to drinking relatively large amounts of cold lager, due to the climate being rather hotter here than in Europe, which is quite understandable.

There was a period when we were quite famous for overindulgence in lager. The soldiers riots that occurred on Valentines Day 1916 in Liverpool and Sydney were the result of trainee soldiers being denied access to alcohol at the overcrowded army training camps in the Liverpool district.

This mutiny was one of the reasons New South Wales adopted the infamous six oclock closing, which led to binge-drinking of cold lager and many social problems. Some other states had similar legislation, and similar social problems such as illegal liquor sales, the development of criminal networks and police corruption.

Today Australia rates a lowly 17th in the list of nations judged on the consumption of beer per head of population. Our figure is 75 litres per head per year, which puts us in the same ballpark as the USA (73 litres) and the UK (70 litres), and way behind European nations like the Czech Republic (189 litres), Austria (108 litres), Romania (100 litres) and Germany (99 litres). In Africa, Namibia (96 litres) beats us hands down, and in Central America we lag a full 3 litres behind Panama (78 litres).

I regret to inform those who take pride in our beer-drinking reputation that we rank higher, 14th place, in the list of wine-drinking nations!

This uniquely Australian term for regurgitation can be easily proven to derive from a hugely popular, long-running series of advertising cartoons that appeared in The Bulletin magazine from 1909 to 1920.

However, before we demystify the weird and wonderful (and magnificently politically incorrect) history of Chunder Loo of Akim Foo and Cobra boot polish, we need to dismiss the far more recent attempt to explain the origin of the term, which is a pathetically obvious furphy.

Barry Humphries as Aunty Edna with Barry Crocker in The Adventures of Barry McKenzie.

Since the 1960s, a story has circulated that chunder is an abbreviated version of an old sailing days warning, watch under, that was yelled by sailors who were about to vomit while working aloft in a sailing ships rigging.

Even at first glance this derivation seems highly unlikely to be valid. Firstly, sailors develop their sea legs relatively quickly and, secondly, they would be unlikely to go aloft feeling obviously nauseous. Then there is the fact that regurgitation usually comes on rather suddenly and the victim is highly unlikely to take the time to shout a warning. Opening the mouth to shout anything would, in all likelihood, precipitate involuntary vomiting.

Although I have no definite proof, I suspect that this story is the work of Barry Humphries who, in the 1960s, invented Bazza McKenzie, a cartoon caricature who represented the ultimate extreme example of the crude Aussie ocker.

The cartoon strip, which was suggested to Humphries by Peter Cook and drawn by Nicholas Garland, began in Private Eye magazine in 1964. It was a highly satirical send-up of the uncultured, sex-starved, boozy Australian expat living in Londons Earls Court.

The character became enormously popular, because the idea appealed on so many levels. British readers loved the put down of the stupid Aussie, while many Aussies enjoyed the satire and laughed affectionately, recognising an exaggerated version of people they knew. In many ways Bazza was an assertion of Aussieness over English pomposity. On a completely different level, many young Aussie males identified with the character as a role model and hero!

Two movies, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie and Barry McKenzie Holds His Own, were made and there were popular songs, like Chunder in the Old Pacific Sea.

As part of the satire, Humphries invented colourful, pseudo Aussie colloquialisms, such as point percy at the porcelain for urination; technicolour yawn, rainbow laugh and liquid laugh for vomiting; and supposedly common Aussie curses like May your chooks turn into emus and kick your dunny down.

(I had the opportunity recently to ask Barry Crocker, who played the part of Bazza McKenzie in the movies, whether it was true that, when the film was shown in the USA, there were sub-titles to explain the Aussie jargon, and the phrase above was sub-titled May your fowls turn into large Australian native birds and kick down your outhouse. Barry confirmed that it was the case!)

In one adventure from the comic strip, Bazza vomits from an upper deck of a ship over a woman on the deck below, who is holding a chihuahua. He rushes down to apologise, sees the tiny vomit-drenched dog and exclaims, Struth, I dont remember eatin that!

Along with all the newly invented pseudo Aussie terms, Humphries was also responsible for bringing back into popularity genuine Aussie slang words like chunder and phrases like up shit creek without a paddle.

The obviously phony story of the derivation of chunder has a very Humphries-like flavour.

The real derivation is an even better story.

Samuel Rowe was a successful furniture and textile designer of the Arts and Crafts movement who migrated to Australia in 1899 at the age of 29 and became the founder of what is today the National Art School.

Rowe saw opportunities for expanding the family boot polish business into Australia and set up a factory in 1908 in Sydney, to manufacture their Cobra brand boot polish.

In 1909, the company began an advertising campaign in the hugely popular Bulletin magazine, which involved the artist brothers, Lionel and Norman Lindsay, drawing a full-page cartoon each fortnight, with an accompanying rhyming verse, written by the short-story writer and regular Bulletin contributor Ernest OFerrall.

As bizarre as it may seem, in the heyday of the White Australia policy, the hero of the cartoon series was an Indian who worked shining shoes at Circular Quay. His heroic exploits were all due to his use of Cobra boot polish. The heros name was Chunder Loo of Akim Foo. The name sounded vaguely Indian and amusing, and Akim Foo was actually a failed campaign battle in the Ashanti War.

The Chunder Loo cartoons became phenomenally popular and The Bulletin was the most successful magazine in the land (it was known as The Bushmans Bible). By 1912, the cartoons were appearing weekly.

All bushmen, working men and soldiers knew the cartoons and, somewhere along the way, Chunder Loo became universal Aussie rhyming slang for spew and was used by Australian soldiers in World War I. As is usually the case with such colloquialisms, it was soon shortened to just chunder.

This is an edited extract from Great Furphies of Australian History by Jim Haynes (Allen & Unwin)

See the rest here:
Jim Haynes: Australians are lightweight drinkers and other furphies - The Australian Financial Review