Green’s Dictionary of Slang

bullamacow n.

canned beef.

1878		Sydney Mail 26 Oct. 671/2: The other day she went up to visit her mother’s family, and while passing the town of Solosolo was waylaid and ravished by a young spark of the town, a son of the late Leota (Bullamacow) .
1884		Teleg. (Brisbane) 23 July 2/4: He only get small fellow bulla-ma-cow, and small fellow bread.
1891		Sydney Mail 24 Jan. 2/4: The crew also recruited their energies upon biscuit and tinned meat, known amongst the Pacific Islands by the generic term ‘bullamacow’.
1911		W. Churchill Beach-la-mar 37/1: bullamacow (pulumakau). London (361) says: ‘Bullamacow means tinned beef. This word was corrupted from the English language by the Samoans, and from them learned by the traders, who carried it along with them into Melanesia’.
1920		Century Mag. 552/1: What more picturesque record of the introduction of cattle into Samoa than ‘bullamacow’? It is the generic name in those islands for fresh beef, canned beef, and virtually all kinds of canned meats.
1920		Bulletin (Sydney) 19 Feb. 24/2: ‘Cape Pork’s’ yarn about the new brand of bully beef [...] reminds me of what the New Britain natives did in the long ago when they were presented with their first tin of bulamakow .
1931		B. Lubbock Bully Hayes 172: Give me a couple of tins of bullamacow, a bag of cartridges and a good cutlass.
1952		T.A.G. Hungerford Ridge and River (1966) 189: It’s no wonder he can walk the way he does, the tough old bastard [...] We would, too, on flaming pigeon-pie every day instead of bullamacow and goldfish!