galah

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galah

The word galah is a borrowing into Australian English from the Aboriginal

Yuwaalaraay language of northern New South Wales. In early records it is

variously spelt as galar, gillar, gulah, etc. It is first recorded in 1862

in J. McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia: `A

vast number of gulahs, curellas, macaws... here'. The bird referred to is

the grey-backed, pink-breasted cockatoo Eolophus roseicapillus, occurring in

all parts of Australia except the extreme north-east and south-west. It is

also known as the red-breasted cockatoo and rose-breasted cockatoo.

Some early settlers use the galah as food. In 1902 the Truth newspaper

reports: 'The sunburnt residents of at that God-forsaken outpost of

civilisation were subsisting on stewed galah and curried crow'. Some writers

report that galah pie was a popular outback dish.

The galah, which usually appears in a large flock, has a raucous call, and

it was perhaps this trait which produced the term galah session for a period

allocated for private conversation, especially between women on isolated

stations, over an outback radio network. F. Flynn in Northern Gateway (1963)

writes: 'The women's radio hour, held regularly night and morning and

referred to everywhere as the 'Galah Session'. It is a special time set

aside for lonely station women to chat on whatever subject they like'. More

generally, a galah session is 'a long chat' - A. Garve, Boomerang (1969):

'For hours the three men chatted... It was Dawes who said at last, "I reckon

this galah session's gone on long enough".'

Very commonly in Australian English galah is used to refer to a fool or

idiot. A.R. Marshall and R. Drysdale in Journey among Men (1962), suggest

that this sense of galah may have a non-Australian origin: 'A clue to the

possible origin of the slang usage of 'galah'. In Malaya gila (pronounced

gee-lah) means mad; hence orang gila, a madman'. But this explanation has

not been accepted, and the Australian meaning must be a transfer from the

bird, no doubt incorporating a judgment about the relative intelligence of

the bird. The following citations give an indication of how the term is

used:

1951 E. Lambert, Twenty Thousand Thieves: 'Yair, and I got better ideas than

some of the galahs that give us our orders'.

1960 R.S. Porteous, Cattleman: 'The bloke on the other end of the line is

only some useless galah tryin' to sell a new brand of dip'.

1971 J. O'Grady, Aussie Etiket: 'You would be the greatest bloody galah this

side of the rabbit-proof fence'.

>From this sense arise a number of colloquial idioms. To be mad as a gum-tree

full of galahs is to be completely crazy. To make a proper galah of oneself

is to make a complete fool of oneself. A pack of galahs is a group of

contemptibly idiotic people.

September 9, 2015