Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus./US) a heavy drinker; a drunkard.

1881		Newcastle Morn. Herald (NSW) 18 Aug. 3/1: The blind man who reads the bible aloud in George-street, Sydney [...] had neglected the good advice of his book, and gone off on the ‘booze’; book, bench and blind boozican were hauled out of the gutter by two bobbies.
1895		Truth (Sydney) 24 Feb. 3/4: A bold, bad man, a boozican, a man of rum and sin.
1904		Punch (Melbourne) 15 Sept. 14: He so completely depicts the manner of a low, despicable boozican, a walking beer barrel, one that will die in the gutter.
1911		Punch (Melbourne) 23 Feb. 2/1: He was resolved to put drunkenness down, and choked up the gaol with the poor boozicans.
1923		Advertiser (Adelaide) 6 Apr. 11/2: A man was filling a pint of beer; the reverberation was very heavy: the boozican dropped the pot. crying out, ‘Oh, hell! Here's those Russians again!’.
1943		Baker Popular Dict. Aus. Sl. (2nd edn).
1985		A. Robinson Dick and Jane 65: I spotted the boozician fandangoing his way into the middle of Sixth to hail a cab.
2003		Village Voice (N.Y.) 9–15 July 🌐 Auteur, deadpan provocateur, renowned boozician, last of the red-hot existential modernists.