Iraqi Icicle
Page 33
Sheila: woman.
Shout: pay for someone else.
Shrooms: hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Slow coach: Someone who cannot keep up with a fast lifestyle.
Smack: heroin.
Smackies heroin addicts.
Smoko: a break from work.
Song and dance: hullabaloo.
Sook: a weak-willed person.
Sorta: sort of, again showing the Aussie penchant for truncation. Australians were lingual minimalists before the word was invented.
Spiel: a speech, often misleading
Spoof: (rhymes with woof) semen.
Spoof himself: ejaculate.
Spruik: to speak, especially like a carnival barker.
Stand on your dig(s) to be inflexible on a point of negotiation.
Sticks, the: areas away from the capital city. The sticks are not usually a synonym for the (rural) bush as the phrase is invariably used ironically. People in a provincial town or even an outer suburb of a city are likely to refer to themselves as being in the sticks. The cute rhyme, flicks in the sticks, refers to the practice of someone bringing a projector and film reels to a place without a cinema or drive-in. A 1977 Australian film was called The Picture Show Man. More than half the film’s $600,000 budget was met by the Australian government ($250,000) and the New South Wales state government ($120,000.) Those were the good old days when Australia was exercising its cultural cringe by trying to shake it off.
Stiff: unlucky.
Stiffed: cheated.
Stiffs: Steele describes stiffs as ‘clock-watching, bored and boring sods who do what they do because that’s what they did yesterday’.
Sweet: good.
Swiftie: a trick or con.
Thesp: thespian, actor.
Tin-pot: insignificant.
Toff: a snob
Top yourself: Commit suicide.
Tout, touting: tipping racehorses
Turn-up for the books: surprise result in a horse race. The books refers to bookmakers.
Twig: to understand.
Urgers: People at the racetrack who try to convince you to back a certain horse. Some urgers do it hoping to get a financial reward if you win. Others are actually trying to get a better price for a different horse than the one they are tipping you.
Ute, utility: the Australian version of the pickup truck. It sometimes goes by the name of coupe utility, though 99.9 percent of Australians refer to it as a ute. Steele’s ute is a Holden EH, made by the General Motors’ Australian division between 1963 and 1965. The EH is a true work of art (and science).
Welcher: Someone who reneges on a bet or a promise.
Wharfie: waterside worker, longshoreman. Before it was sold in the 1990s, the Brisbane Wharfies’ Club attracted a diverse clientele including gamblers, trainers, jockeys, firefighters and other public servants as well as wharfies and their relatives and friends.
Winning post: the finish line of a horse race. In some ways, winning post is an odd expression as most horses and gamblers lose when that point is reached.
Worrywart: This word for a person is self-explanatory.
Worse for wear: drunk.
Yobbo: uncultured uncouth (usually) man.
You got me? Australian for Capisce?
Acknowledgements
THE Go-Betweens’ concert at Queensland University in 1986 happened in the first half of the year, not in November. I moved it to place most dramatic events in summer. November in Brisbane is summer, despite the seasonal theory it is spring.
NO gambling boat The African Queen conducted business on the Tweed River in 1991.
AN SP bookie did work from the back of a butcher’s shop, a decade earlier, and in Brisbane not Tweed Heads.
THANKS for permission to include Go-Betweens’ lyrics:
From Streets of Your Town, and
From Twin Layers of Lightning, both written by Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, publisher Complete Music Ltd.
THANKS to my editor Eoin O’Brien. I backed a winner with Eoin, who is not only an astute and clever wordsmith, but also a multi-instrumentalist and a member of a rock band.
THANKS to photographer Russell Brown for his cover photo on first and second editions.
THANKS to Ian Curr for typesetting and layout help.
THANKS to designer Dhrupod for working with me to create the third-edition covers. We shared the ideas. The artistry and science belong to Dhrupod.
Did you love Iraqi Icicle Third Edition? Then you should read 7 Shouts by Bernie Dowling!
How did U.S. President Barack Obama get so familiar with Australian slang and culture? Perhaps he read Bernie Dowling’s 7 Shouts.
President Obama is in the book along with sports Australians really .love, the Melbourne Cup horse race, of course, but also fish throwing and cockroach races.
7 Shouts is a comic cosmic journey to the humorous heart of the Australian soul.
There’s science in the Russell Crowe First Law and art as Dowling tries to convince Delta Goodrem to go on a blind date with a disadvantaged teenager.
There’s farm animals such as french poodles Fi Fi and Fa Fa which enter the sheep-dog trials.
7 Shouts is based on seven years of Dowling’s award winning newspaper column, updated to 2014.
7 Shouts is a classic contemporary doco of a world gone mad, but still a heap of fun.
Read more at Bernie Dowling’s site.
Also by Bernie Dowling
My Shout
7 Shouts
WAG short stories
Inspired By . . .
Redemption: 2017 Tales from the Writers Anthology Group of Moreton Bay Region of Australia
Standalone
O Lorde
Can you believe it . . .
Sweet and Sour
Iraqi Icicle Third Edition
Maaate! Bribe-Proofing the Public Purse Against Good Blokes
Watch for more at Bernie Dowling’s site.
About the Author
Bernie Dowling is an Australian journalist who lives in the Pine Rivers district, just north of the Queensland State Capital of Brisbane.
Dowling grew up and lived in Brisbane most of his life though he has lived in or frequently visited provincial and coastal towns across south-east Queensland.
He has worked in many reporting rounds, including arts and entertainment, crime, politics, human interest and sports. He published a weekly humor column for 11 years.
Dowling has drawn on all these diverse strands of his working and social life to produce Iraqi Icicle, a highly original detective thriller which is his first novel.
The author lives with his wife and son in Lawnton, a Pine Rivers suburb.
Read more at Bernie Dowling’s site.
About the Publisher
Bent Banana Books is a boutique publishing house stretching the boundaries of genre fiction and historical and biographical non-fiction. BBB makes the promise that "our books are different".
Visit www.bentbananabooks.com