The Australian: My Kind of Country: Bill Wannan

A treasury of all things Australian. Chapters include: Popular Sayings, Jests, Rhymes and Anecdotes: Game?! He's as game as Ned Kelly! No more sense than a koala bear, an' not half as good-lookin'. Or: He's as mad as a gum tree full o' galahs! Heroes and Rebels:Ben Hall and Ned Kelly, of course - and Peter Lalor, The Man With The Donkey and Les Darcy; The Yarn-Spinners: Silent Australians, Casual Australians, Bullockies, Shearers, Station Cooks, Swaggies and yet more characters but also including: Soldier Yarns, Bush Directions, Bushmen's Dogs and of course, Dad and Dave; Superstitions and Fallacies: Craig's Dream, Snake-Fallacies, The Town That Lost and more; Place Lore: Place names including - naturally - Fisher's Ghost Creek, Bread and Dripping Valley, The Never-Never and some local anomalies - The Man Who Rode The Bull Through Wagga, the Dog on the Tucker Box; The Man from Snowy River and humorous signs; Australianisms: The Larrikin, the Push, Buckley's Chance, Furphy, Wowsers, Sundowners, Bunyips, Diggers and Drongoes; Perspectives: Contemporary accounts of Convicts and Governors, The Gold Diggings, Squatters and Selectors, Immigrants, Early Trade Unionism and Republicanism and Nationalism.