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The old man was uncanny. He could spot them a mile away. The radio would be blaring, the kids would be treating the back seat of the station wagon as a trampoline and the view through the windscreen would be obscured by cigarette smoke and splattered insects.
But no obstacle or distraction could hinder my father's radar-like ability to detect the presence of Australia's most insidious pest.
"Bloody drongo," he'd mutter every few minutes. Damn things were everywhere. A native creature skilled at annoying others and renowned for its extreme levels of stupidity, the bloody drongo had reached plague proportions throughout Australia in the 1970s. My father cursed their existence each time he encountered one.
Bitumen roads were the bloody drongo's natural habitat. "How did that bloody drongo manage to get a licence?" the old man would snarl as he avoided another near-collision or found himself stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle.
But Homo Drongus also thrived in many other environments. My father skilfully identified a drongo impersonating his boss at work - bloody drongos were notorious for refusing pay rises and promotions. A neighbour mowing his lawns at 7am on a Sunday was clearly another. And our hapless local football team would never be good until "they get rid of all those bloody drongos".
I quickly learned the slow-moving, dull-witted drongo was like mosquitos and marketing executives - abundant, purposeless and one of the great mysteries of evolution.
But then the bloody drongo abruptly vanished. Its sudden disappearance - by the 1980s you rarely heard its name uttered in vain - coincided with the near-extinction of a related but far more affable native, the dag.
Unlike drongos - an appellation based on a much-derided 1920s racehorse famous for never winning a race - dags were more intelligent and friendly.
Yes, a dag was unfashionable and uncool, the predecessor of the modern nerd. The name, after all, originally described that woolly cake of dung hanging from a sheep's bum. But 'dag' was an affectionate term for those who didn't quite fit in, or try to.
My father's passionate dislike of the bloody drongo meant I became a dag who hung out with other dags. We collected comics, read books and sat in the front row at the cinema through repeated showings of Star Wars to better scrutinise the special effects. We always occupied the front seats of the bus. The back was reserved by the drongos, who would steal our comics in a pathetic attempt to pretend they could read.
For decades I'd assumed these two colourful creatures from my childhood had either gone the way of the Tasmanian tiger or evolved into that widely distributed modern idiot, the bloody dickhead.
Until last week. A woman in a supermarket aisle was complaining loudly on her phone to a friend about someone I assumed was her husband. "He's such a bloody drongo," she said.
A jolt of excitement coursed down my spine. Could it be true? Were there still bloody drongos existing in the wild, despite no authentic sightings having been made for almost half a century? And would that mean that the great Australian dag had also survived?
It seems so. Monash University surveyed 2300 Australians not long ago about their use of slang. When asked what name they favoured to describe those suffering from chronic stupidity, more than one-third nominated "drongo" - far more than those who preferred "dickhead".
This is a staggering result. Until last week I hadn't heard anyone utter "drongo" in decades of travelling around the country. My adult children have never heard of them and these days my father can't recall using the phrase.
Yet a significant number of Australians - presumably older ones who still think a hack is a mediocre employee and not a viral shortcut method for cleaning the oven - have seen drongos in their midst.
Like all languages, and much like the nation itself, Australian slang has changed considerably in the past half-century.
A study this year of 1500 Australians by Preply, an online language tutoring service, found the most annoying Australian slang words to be "sheila" and "crikey" - two words rapidly losing favour among men and women.
And while "mate" remains the most popular slang term in the country (and the safest for those with an inability to remember names), it is also used less frequently by younger people and is highly disliked by increasing numbers of women.
An Australian future without "mate"? Hard to imagine. But then again, who could believe those bloody drongos would make a comeback, either?
HAVE YOUR SAY: What Australian slang do you still use? Are there drongos and dags in your neck of the woods? Is the word "mate" overused? What modern slang puzzles you? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- The Australian National University has expelled Beatrice Tucker, the student who said on the ABC that "Hamas deserves our unconditional support". It is the first university in the country to take such strong disciplinary action.
- Adam Bandt has threatened to sue Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus over allegations defamatory comments were made towards the Greens leader after a fiery debate in the House of Representatives on Wednesday when Labor and the Coalition united in condemnation against the Greens for stoking tensions by supporting pro-Palestinian protesters, after some electorate offices were vandalised or barricaded by demonstrators.
- Australia's largest renewable energy investment will be unveiled in Queensland's budget, Premier Steven Miles committing $26 billion to the plan. Mr Miles said he had no other option than to make the record injection, with almost 100,000 job losses forecast if Queensland wavered from its renewables path.
THEY SAID IT: "Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work." - Carl Sandburg
YOU SAID IT: The economy's all but sputtered to a halt. The cost of living is crippling. So why is the political conversation fixated on immigration issues?
"I agree entirely with you," writes Margaret. "Homelessness, hunger and ability to pay the bills should be front of mind in the political arena. Also, global boiling."
Michael writes: "When Australian convicted criminals have served their sentences they are released into the community. No one is suggesting that they should be locked up forever unless they have been sentenced to life imprisonment. So I don't understand why it should be any different for refugees and migrants. There are a lot more important issues that should be being raised by the opposition, but they are more interested in trying to scare the community for what they think is political gain."
"It's not, 'It's the economy, stupid'," writes Sharon. "It's 40-plus years of neoliberalism, stupid. All praise Maggie Thatcher and Ronnie Reagan."
Anita writes: "It's likely the opposition has conducted their focus groups and determined that immigration, when it applies to people who do not look like us, is the most divisive issue and so they're going with that. Nothing unites people like having a common enemy, we're told. Get people hot, bothered and foaming at the mouth and you have an ally (not for life but long enough)."
"A few more criminals on the street does not impact our lives just because they're non-citizens," writes Jennifer. "Dutton focuses on policing (whether it be borders or criminals) because it's all he knows. He failed miserably in Immigration and Defence on all fronts, including costing us a fortune in dodgy contracts and unnecessary incarceration, while allowing the wrong people into the country. The Liberals try to hide their ignorance on most topics by attacking instead of contributing ideas. No one in the LNP understands the economy, so they can't talk about that or even ask the right questions."
Murray writes: "It is absolutely true that immigration is not the foremost issue for this old age pensioner, when looking at a grocery trolley containing $200 worth of non luxuries that is nowhere near full. Immigration, no. The utterly monumental mess the Immigration Minister is making of it and the weak and evasive way the Prime Minister is responding to it, that certainly engages my interest. I am quite capable of keeping an eye on several issues at the same time. This one is like an open sore for the government."
"No, the release of detainees and immigration visas won't influence my next vote," writes Felicity. "Living in Northern Tasmania our once-safe community is beginning to show some big cracks. I was almost bowled over by an older man with half a trolley full of groceries running through the automatic entry gates out of the store. The nearby operator hardly raised an eyebrow, saying we can't do anything but call police. A similar supermarket event happened to my elderly sister a week or so ago. Where has this country fallen to when homeless are living in tents in parks here during winter? Our fallback of mince and sausages are now almost too dear to buy. Yes, $10 for 500g not to mention fruit here in Tasmania where apples and berries grow so well."
Maggie writes: "Parliamentary proceedings have wandered a long way from considered debate. Politics has become a highly-developed game of manoeuvring, point-scoring and quick stabbing of the opponent. It's all about painting one's opponent as clumsy, clueless and incompetent, while drawing a veil over the equivalent actions of one's own side. So the hot topics become those with hot-button, dog-whistle slogans, compared with which the economy can't compete. And this appears to be taking precedent over any meaningful advance in policy."