Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (N.Z.) a Catholic, usu. an Irish Catholic.

1940		F. Sargeson ‘They Gave Her a Rise’ in A Man And His Wife (1944) 19: I’m a Doolan myself, and Mrs. Bowman was always down on the churches.
1959		G. Slatter Gun in My Hand 60: And in peace the civilians must have something to hate too. The Dutchies or the Pommies or the Doolins or somebody.
1963		W.H. Pearson Coal Flat 63: They had called him ‘the Doolan bugger’–Doolan on their tongues meant an Irish Catholic.
1968		G. Slatter Pagan Game (1969) 92: The original Crusaders had all been Doolins.
1976		(con. 1935) A. Campbell Island To Island (1984) 87: We’d gang up on the kids who chucked off at us — like the boys from the Catholic home [...] we’d call them ‘doolans’, ‘doolies’, ‘Mickey Doolans’ — or worse.
1980		M. Lawry Good Luck and Lavender 77: This fellow measured far short of what they wanted for their daughter, and anyway, he was a ‘doolan’.
1993		Contact (Wellington) 5 Aug. 3: The classics are ignored by St Patrick’s College band, Downstream Doolies [DNZE].
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 66: doolan An Irish Catholic, often a Micky Doolan, a popular Irish name. In Australia a doolan was a policeman because he was likely to be Irish and Catholic.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

c.1962		J.K. Baxter Horse (1985) 42: Horse had not been in a Doolan church before [DNZE].
1987		J. Sligo Final Things 8: The Doolan priest who was always hanging around the convent, as everybody knew [DNZE].

3. (Aus.) a police officer [stereotyped link between the Irish and the police].

1959		D. Niland Big Smoke 59: Used to be a big doolan in Oxford Street.
2003		see sense 1.