Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a drinking spree.

1908		Truth (Wellington) 4 Jan. 6: Walker’s explanation was that he was on the boozeroo, and didn’t know what he was doing [DNZE].
1911		Truth (Wellington) 30 Sept. 5: His good lady had got him sundry jobs which he had promptly lost through the ‘boozelum.’ He was all right when he was sober, only he was never sober [DNZE].
1920		N.Z. Magistrates’ Court Reports 15-16 107: The defendant asked if the whisky was going into the King Country [...] and was told it was not, and that Volker wanted it for what he called a ‘boozeroo.’ ln other words, he intended to consume it with his friends.
1943		J.A.W. Bennett ‘Eng. as it is Spoken in N.Z.’ in AS XVIII:2 Apr. 89: A ‘good spree’ would be described as a ‘proper old boozeroo’, this word being of the same pattern as various American words in -eroo.
1947		D. Davin For the Rest of Our Lives 75: All the boys still drinking to celebrate the Second Ech coming from England [...] And the whole lot of them thinking: well here’s for a last good boozeroo.
1952		Landfall 23 224: His [beer] party is not so different from the Saturday night boozeroo in the Sydenham side-street with the keg on the kitchen-sink .
1960		J. Boswell Ernie and the Rest of Us 106: ‘Meeting!’ retorted Mother, witheringly. ‘Boozeroo you mean! [...] I’m glad the old Soak had to walk home.’.
1970		Listener (NZ) 12 Oct. XII: It’s going to be a real boozeroo [DNZE].
1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 19/1: boozeroo heavy drinking, a drinking party; a spree.
1992		Eve. Post (Wellington) 17 Jan. 3: I must here confess I’ve never been to a Legion boozaroo [DNZE].
2002		Jaden ‘Boozing’ at allpoetry.com 18 May 🌐 Boozeroo swill / blinding-up like a souse. / Pie-eyed and pixilated / from a methelated douse.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].

2. a public house.

1963		J.K. Baxter ‘Letter to Robert Burns’ in Coll. Poems (1979) 290: Till any Scotsman with the shakes / Can pile on your head his mistakes / And petrify a boozaroo / Reciting Tam o’ Shanter through.
1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].