Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 94, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 April 1911 — Australian Names. [ARTICLE]

Australian Names.

“Nearly all my friends,” remarked an Australian the other day, “call me a ‘cornstalk.’ I've quit correcting them long ago. “Now, as it happens, the term should only be applied to the people of New South Wales. They are the tall, slim blokes who look as though you could break them in two between your finger and thumb. I come from the colony of Victoria, where we are known by the still more unattractive sobriquet of ’gumsuckers,’ on account of our great forests of blue gum trees. “Queensland is in the tropics, and its inhabitants are called ‘banana eaters.' The South Australians are ‘crow eaters,’ because in times of drought the natives are sometimes reduced to the use of crows as food. "So call me a ,‘gumsucker’ If you like, but never a ‘cornstalk,’ and the next time you want to apply a nickname to an Australian ask him from which colony he comes.”