I’ve written before about Tasmanianisms – those words or phrases that are unique to Tasmania or only used here. I love to see them picked up and given new life, so I was delighted to learn that the mascot for our new AFL team is a big Tassie Devil called Rum ’Un. Hooray! Such a pleasure to see a distinctively local term being taken up instead of something from the great swamp of globalized pop culture slang that you could hear anywhere in the world.
My one teensy quibble is with the spelling. I’ve always spelt it rum ‘n. The apostrophe is there to replace the dropped letter ‘u’. You don’t need it if you are spelling out the full phrase: rum un.
Rum un is a piece of old English slang. Rum means odd or peculiar, as in “that’s rum” or “he’s a rum one”. It came to Australia with our English forebears but seems to have survived only in Tasmania, which is why it deserves to be preserved.
Anyway, it can be either rum un or rum ‘n. Just sayin’.
I also loved it when our basketballers were named the Jackjumpers. But is jackjumper a Tasmanianism within the meaning of the Act?
Before I came to live in Tasmania, home of my paternal ancestors, I wouldn’t have known a jackjumper if it jumped up and bit me, which by all accounts is something this nasty little critter is likely to do. (Highly observant readers might remember that I already used this joke in an earlier piece on this subject, but it’s a beauty so I’m giving it another run.)
Thereafter I assumed jackjumper was a proper Tassieism. So I was a bit saddened to learn they aren’t exclusively Tasmanian. Despite their low profile elsewhere, they are apparently also to be found in parts of Victoria, NSW and South Australia. Damn. But it’s still a terrific name for our basketball team.
When I first wrote about Tassieisms, I noted along with rum ‘n the nointer – a brat, and the yaffler – someone who talks a lot, usually about nothing much. I’d heard friends and colleagues using these terms in daily speech, and have been on the alert for further examples ever since.
One local told me his Coast-born grandfather used to mutter yaffler in the direction of his grandmother. On a trip to the west coast last year a young native-born lass working on the Gordon River cruise described someone recently met as a yaffler. A young man who gave us a tour of the old house we were staying in described an old gent in a historic photo as a rum ‘n.
Haven’t heard any further nointers but I’m keeping my eyes and ears peeled.
Chigger is another Tasmanianism, although surprisingly it’s not on the list of Tassie Terms compiled by the Australian National Dictionary Centre. Like bogan, it’s a derogatory term by which one (mostly youthful) urban tribe sneers at another for being from the wrong side of town and for sporting the wrong kinds of dress, speech, hair, and so on. In Sydney they call them westies and in Melbourne broadies, after the suburb Broadmeadows. In Hobart there seems to be a similar association with outlying, broadacre working-class suburbs, as in chiggers from Chigwell.
But chiggers didn’t start in Chigwell. Like rum un, chigger is another piece of old English slang that’s still heard there in some places. My theory is that it took root and thrived in Hobart because of the handy availability of a suburb full of poorer folks to stigmatize. If anyone has a better theory, I’d be interested to hear it. I’d also like to know whether chiggers are known outside Hobart.
In any case, Chigger would be a great name for the next local sports team that needs a mascot. Or maybe we should rename our cricketers the Chiggers. Better than the Hurricanes, I reckon. What have hurricanes got to do with Tasmania anyway? We don’t even have them here!
I once heard a local lass refer to one of those big huntsman spiders as a triantula. I was all set to dismiss this as a corruption of tarantula which is itself incorrectly applied to the huntsman, but my informant insisted “that’s what we call them here”.
The Tassie Triantulas. There you go – another great name for a Tasmanian team!
Some weeks later…..
I may have discovered one that no one else has thought of…read on to find out more!
But first, to the ones that have made it into the books.
When I was still at the ABC and writing and talking about language I took a look at the word map jointly set up by the ABC and the Macquarie Dictionary to collect and place Australian regionalisms.
There, in the Tasmanian list and in the vanguard of the As, was attack of the flying axe handles. There’s no way to put this politely: it means a sudden and severe onset of diarrhoea. I mentioned it on-air and a listener rang up to relate its colourful etymology. It seems that when you’re out in the bush felling timber, far from the nearest source of the fresh food that confers bowel regularity, such a condition can come on you so suddenly that whatever you may be holding is flung vigorously away while you make a dash for the nearest sheltering scrub.
But is it exclusively Tasmanian? It should be, what with that whiff of old-style forestry about it, but the map shows it’s been reported from every region of Australia.
Most of the hundreds of entries in the Tasmanian section turn out not to be exclusively Tasmanian, as with bag of death, a previously unknown (to me) slang phrase meaning a bladder of cheap wine, or triantelope for tarantula.
I did come across badger box, a shack or poorly-built house, as in “let’s go for a spot of fishing at your old badger box.” This might well be a genuine Tassie-ism. One contributor said it was a term used by piners on the west coast in the 19th century for the small temporary huts they built to live in while working.
Another contributor pointed out there’s a beach on King Island called Badger’s Box, possibly so-named because of the number of wombats in the vicinity. Badgers are not of course the same as wombats, but people say it’s a hangover from the early days when settlers used English terms for strange animals that looked a bit like familiar English ones. The Australian National Dictionary confirms this Tasmanian usage of badger for wombat.
By the same token, I’ve heard that echidnas are sometimes called porcupines. Is this true? And is it confined to Tasmania, I wonder?
Someone once told me that the description of tall straight trees as spars persists in Tasmania, and that it was a vestige of the state’s nautical beginnings, when sailors often had to come ashore to find long tall timber to replace standing rigging damaged in storms.
The Australian dictionaries list any number of words for natural phenomena that are unique to Tasmania such as Bridgewater Jerry, the fog that floats down the Derwent in cold weather. This one fits the bill as a genuine Tasmanianism. In a slightly different category are our unique flora and fauna such as celery top and Huon pines, and Tasmanian devils and tigers. The species are uniquely Tasmanian but the terminology is universal.
It’s the same with terms that describe Tasmanian things but are widely known around the country, such as blunnies or Burnie board.
What we’re looking for are those distinctive names given to things that might be called something different elsewhere. The Australian National Dictionary mentions inchman, a nasty little ant which I think is known as a bullant in other parts of Australia. It also notes horizontal for scrub. Hadn’t heard that one before, and I couldn’t find any explanatory reference anywhere, until Damian Bester*, keeper of vast amounts of Tasmanian lore and history, told me it was the name given on the west coast to a native plant which grows to a certain height then sprawls thickly and horizontally over the ground. It was the scourge of early timbergetters and latterly of bushwalkers.
And so to the one I think the dictionaries have missed altogether. It’s the leavers’ dinner, that rite of passage for youngsters at the end of their schooldays. I’d never heard it till I came to live in Tasmania, and as far as I can tell no Tasmanians have reported it to the dictionaries as a possibly unique local usage. My theory is Tasmanians just assume this is what all Australians call such events. It isn’t. Google it if you don’t believe me.
Another one might be the American tea – an afternoon charity fundraiser. Not reported anywhere, but I distinctly remember it popping up in a community notice years ago, and my locally-born workmates all knew what it meant. Why American, I wonder? Dear reader, please enlighten me!
*Damian Bester is the editor of The New Norfolk and Derwent Valley News, and a former journalist with the Hobart Mercury. My earlier writings on the subject of Tasmanianisms have been published in both these newspapers.
Damian’s beloved old nanna always called echidnas ‘porcupines’ and wombats ‘badgers’.