Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus.) a New Age hippie or environmentalist.

1993		Aus. Word Map 🌐 feral1 a person who leads an alternative lifestyle.
1995		Sun-Herald (Sydney) 1 Jan. 3: To the ferals, who travel up and down Australia’s east coast looking for logging protests to attend, the Federal Government’s decision is appalling.
1998		S. Maloney Nice Try 129: We still had our rough edges, our greatcoated winos and barefoot ferals, our ferret-faced teenage mothers and lingerie lunches, our dumb-fuck rev-heads and back-lane chop shops.
2002		S. Maloney Something Fishy (2006) 208: A pod of ferals was moving towards the exit, [...] soap-shy, low-tech, bush-dwelling hippies. Crusty chicks in shaman chic.