Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also bullocky bloke, ...boy) a bullock-driver.

1878		New Mthly Mag. 412: Bullocky Pat — so called from having driven a team of those useful and much-enduring animals — was a stalwart Irish lad.
1889		Dead Bird (Sydney) 21 Sept. 1/4: He went away with a ‘bullocky’ up country.
1890		‘Rolf Boldrewood’ Colonial Reformer I 196: By George, Jack, you’re a regular bullocky boy.
1894		G. Boothby On the Wallaby 219: Talking of bullock drivers, the driver himself is called the bullocky, while his mate or assistant is denominated the bullocky’s offsider.
1899–1901		(?) H. Lawson ‘Getting Back on Dave Regan’ in Roderick (1972) 364: Most of us bullickies useter camp there for the night.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 3 Feb. 14/3: The Australian bullocky isn’t in it for cuss language with the Constantinople Greek.
1904		Star (Auckland) 6 Aug. 6/7: [advt.] Bullocky Bill had a cold so bad [...] wood’s peppermint cure his voice brought back.
1910		C.E.W. Bean On the Wool Track 251: There have been brutes of bullockies, just as there have been brutes of bishops.
1918		C.J. Dennis ‘The Homeward Track’ in Backblock Ballads 33: What’s a bullocky to live for? Days of toil are hard and long.
1920		Truth (Wellington) 21 Feb. 1: ‘We must “energise” the affairs of the country,’ booms the Tory press [...] Same as bullocky ‘energises’ his straining team .
1926		K.S. Prichard Working Bullocks 11: Red Burke was the youngest bullocky on the Karri to own his team, and one of the best drivers.
1931		Townsville Dly Bulletin (Qld) 9 July 4/3: ‘Cestus’ mentioned the little bullocky-boy, and well do I know how a little five-years-old, preparatory to helping Daddy In a few years’ time, harnesses up a number of bottles for bullocks, and after parading up and down his ‘team,’ exercising bullock drivers’ terms, he finally casts down his whip [etc].
1938		H. Drake-Brockman Men Without Wives I i: She’s grown almost as hairy-heeled as the cattle. Can swear like a bullocky, too.
1946		A. Marshall ‘Bushman’ in Tell Us About the Turkey, Jo 95: ‘Come on you groping dingo,’ he shouted to the big bullocky who was tightening his belt.
1951		D. Stivens Jimmy Brockett 303: One day I was passing and heard him swearing like a bullocky.
1965		B. Wannan Fair Go, Spinner 201: Why, here comes old Bill the Bullocky.
1975		K. Willey Ghosts of the Big Country 204: I had many a fight with those bullocky blokes.
1981		P. White Flaws in the Glass 11: [He] was most at ease in the company of racehorse-trainers, bullockies, stockmen.
1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 22/2: bullocky bullock driver and the colourful language he was known for from earliest times, notably the drunken, foul-mouthed Sam of whom Edward Jerningham Wakefield writes in Adventure in New Zealand calling his bullocks by the names of the magistrates who fined him for bad language and for flogging his beasts.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 161: Like many colonialisms these terms appear in bush songs and ballads, forms of verse and song that often deal with workers such as shearers, drovers, bullockies (famed Lingoists), and a whole host of associated figures of Australian myth.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].

2. (also bullockese) the language or jargon of bullock-drivers; the inference being of a preponderance of obscenities and oaths.

[1855		Bell’s Life in Sydney 18 Aug. 3/1: Mr. Redman, pray do not make uso of expressions only fit for bullock-drivers].
1898		P. Warung ‘Half-crown Bob’ in Tales of the Riverine 116: ‘He would give those (bullockese) selectors somethink to remember him by!’ he swore.
1901		Bulletin (Sydney) 17 Aug. 15/1: [T]he Cornstalk went on to tell him in the best bullockese that his sort oughtn’t to be trusted with a borrowed gun on Easter Monday.
1915		C.E.W. Bean Anzac Book 103/2: Bang! bang! went a couple of bombs, followed by cries and shouts from Abdul, and above it all we were certain we heard fragments of language, of the category known in Australia as ‘bullocky.’.
[1921		(con. WWI) E. Lynch Somme Mud 112: Real stark-naked bullock-driver abuse it is].
1955		N. Pulliam I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 231/1: bullocky – a bullock driver. Their conversation sometimes said to be so profane and obscene that bullocky also means any speech which is very crude and vulgar.
1976		B.G. Andrews Twayne’s World Authors 383 69: The race proceeds with first one boat and then the other getting ahead until Darke ‘effervesces’ with ‘(bullockese)’ and ‘(more bullockese)’ when the Pride of the Darling runs out of wood.
1988		see sense 1.