Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus.) little or nothing to eat.

1986

R. Beckett Dinkum Aussie Dict. 29: Hawkesbury duck: An ear of maize or a corncob with the kernels intact. Road gang convicts used to steal these cobs from nearby farmers’ fields when they thought they would not be detected. A derisory phrase meaning that one has very little to eat. Still used in the country to give vent to the feelings that one is hard up through no fault of one’s own, thus if one is making one’s dinner from Hawkesbury duck and ‘underground mutton’ there is ‘sweet FA’ in the house.