Graham Seal - Australias Funniest Yarns: Traditional Humour From the Bush and the Outback

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

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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 nations historical past. The Courier Mail

This book is a little island of Aussie cultureone 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 Seals 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 Australias 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 countrythe real Artful Dodger, intrepid bushrangers Great Convict Stories offers a fascinating insight into life in Australias 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:

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 OBrien 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

Campfire in the bush with mates, some tucker and a good yarn, Victoria, 1920s.

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 laughand, sometimes, cringehumour 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 formsyarns, 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 pigs 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.