Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus.) ‘Wagga rugs are Australian coverings made from four or five flour sacks or chaff bags, sewn together with a bag needle and twine [...] Also known as: Murrumbidgee blanket; wogger’ (Textile Research Centre, Leiden, Netherlands).

1908		Geraldton Exp. 7 Dec. 2/6: Three members of the present Ministry were on friendly terms with Wagga rags and Murrumbidgee blankets, with blueys, and black billies .
1911		Australasian (Melbourne) 9 Dec. 50/4: The Murrumbidgee blanket is simply a bag cut open, with no lining at all. It is used to augment a scanty covering in cold weather.
1921		Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 3 Sept. : I packed: a couple of ‘Murrumbidgee blankets’ in my swag through the winter of 1903, and found them very warm and much preferable to the thread-bare bush blankets.
1935		World’s News (Sydney) 17 July 12: The swagman always has a warm and dry bed to sleep on though he carries only a Murrumbidgee blanket (three corn-sacks sewn together.
1947		Sydney Morn. Herald 7 June 8/7: [S]uch makeshift masterpieces as the Murrumbidgee blanket and the Wagga rug.
1951		Advocate (Burnie, Tas.) 22 Sept. 13/3: These Wagga rugs and Murrumbidgee blankets did not look as attractive as white woollen blankets, but they served the same purpose and cost only a few pence.

(Aus.) brown sugar moistened with cold tea and spread on a damper.

1901		Bulletin (Sydney) 14 Sept. 16/4: ‘Murrumbidgee jam’ consists of brown sugar muddled up with cold tea. When spread on damper, and dropped jam-side down in the sand, it doesn’t taste so well as when not dropped jam-side down in the sand. It is also called Whaler’s Delight.
1943		Baker Popular Dict. Aus. Sl. (2nd edn) 52: Murrumbidgee jam, brown sugar moistened with cold tea and spread on damper.

(Aus.) a raw egg plus vinegar and seasoning.

1945

Baker Aus. Lang. 82: Here are a few general terms: [...] Murrumbidgee oyster, a raw egg taken with vinegar, pepper and salt.

(Aus.) an itinerant tramp whose ‘beat’ focuses on the rivers of New South Wales; thus Murrumbidgee whaling, tramping.

1878		Aus. Town & Country Journal 29 June 39/4: The typical ‘Murrumbidgee Whaler’, [...] a somewhat objectionable colonial institution. These poor wandering ‘loafers’ who have elevated ‘cadging’ into a species of science.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 23 May 14/3: Donald Dinnie is travelling towards Wagga […] as a Scotchman who will back himself to throw more men, toss bigger cabers, and eat more oatmeal porridge than any three Murrumbidgee ‘whalers’ in the district.
1889		Illus. Sydney News 3 Oct. 32/1: A Darling Whaler is not a man who goes down to the sea in ships [...] or any other resource of civilization in the direction of water locomotion.
1894		G. Boothby On the Wallaby 318: The ‘Darling whalers’, as they are called: idle, loafing, thieving tramps [...] who move up and down the river (up one bank and down the other), from year’s end to year’s end, doing no work and depending for their existence upon the charity of the unfortunate squatter .
1894		Advertiser (Adelaide) 12 July 5/7: The men who roved through the country begging for meals and work and taking only the former whether they had permission or not as downright robbers. Such were the ‘Murray whalers’.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 51: Murrumbidgee Whaler, bushmen looking for work on the stations, and never working.
1898		Independent (Footscray, Vic.) 25 June 5/5: [title] The Murrumbidgee Whaler Hurrah! for the jolly old whaler’s life / Hurrah! for the wallaby track.
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 166: WHALERS [...] loafers or sundowners who frequent the Murray, Darling, and Mujrrum bidgeee [sic] Rivers and their branches. This class [...] subsist by cadging at the town and houses along the rivers.
1902		Clarence and Richmond Express 1 July 3/3: The ‘Murrumbidgee Whaler’ was a recognised institution on the Murray Billabong.
1903		C. von Hagen Plunder & Hunger vii: The long, weary, heart-breaking tramp, tramp, tramp, from station to station, had, in a few short years converted a bright, intelligent young man full of hope and energy, into a confirmed ‘Darling whaler’ and vagrant [AND].
1905		Advertiser (Adelaide) 26 Sept. 8/1: The persons described as ‘Murray whalers’ are guilty of theft and other forms of dishonesty.
1911		E.S. Sorenson Dissertation of Travellers in Life in the Aus. Backblocks 70: There was a well-known Murrumbidgee whaler in the Wagga district, who had been doing the one circuit [...] for thirty odd years.
1912		Bulletin (Sydney) 31 Oct. 15/3: Add the usual accompaniments to a ‘’Bidgee whaler’s’ soup, and, if obtainable, a little garlic.
1913		Townsville Daily Bulletin 6 Sept. 11/1: The late chief Bidgee whaler, ‘Scotty the Wrinkler’.
1917		Sydney Morn. Herald 9 June 7/6: Wilcannia, haunt of ‘Darling Whalers’ and scene of many a squalid ending of a life far other- wise begun.
1918		Register (Adelaide) 24 May 5/6: There is the incessant stream of nomadic Murray whalers—usually splendid fellows, but not always so.
1923		Register (Adelaide) 11 Oct. 8/6: As we proceeded up-stream, the domicile of a ‘Murray whaler’ was seen, a roughly constructed tent.
1925		Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton, Qld) 15 Aug. 8/6: ‘Circular Joe,’ a whaler of the Murrumbidgee.
1933		Advertiser (Adelaide) 1 Apr. 9/8: We met a Darling whaler—he was bound for Murray Bridge in a boat that weighed a good 15 cwt.
1937		Queenslander (Brisbane) 11 Mar. 2/2: I once knew a Murrumbidgee whaler who always used goanna oil for fishing.
1938		Western Argus (Kalgoorlie, WA) 15 Mar. 7/1: What on earth is a ‘Murray whaler,’ you may ask. Well [...] he is simply a swagman, who, instead of travelling on foot, owns a boat, and, with all his worldly belongings [...] he drifts, rows and camps along the great inland waterway.
1941		Baker Popular Dict. Aus. Sl. 102: According to an old-timer correspondent: ‘They were so apt to lie about the size of the “whales” they caught that a generic name for this class of unemployable traveller came into being.’ This explanation is open to some doubt. [...] In our early days New South Welsh horses exported to India for army use were known as walers. The original Murrumbidgee whalers may therefore have been N.S.W. tramps.
1945		Baker Aus. Lang. 89: Herring-boning the Darling on Jackie Dow’s mutton, used of a wanderer who lives on the country (probably first applied to men of the Murrumbidgee whaler type).
1956		T. Ronan Moleskin Midas 17: The second restrained him from becoming cook, hut-keeper, shepherd, or straight-out ‘Murrumbidgee whaler’.
1982		P. Adam-Smith Shearers 224: ‘The Darling whalers’ were known to the shearers for fifty years: swagmen in canoes, they bartered their catch of fish to the bladesmen.