Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus.) according to context, the donor (the UK) or recipient (Australia or New Zealand) of loans.

1872		Rockhampton Bulletin (Qld) 3 Oct. 1/1: Our friend Borrow who is always lesa or more out at elbows, is deeply interested in a new work on ‘The Great Loan Land,’ and has serious thoughts of emigrating to so desirable a country.
1880		Melbourne Punch (Vic.) 2 Sept. 7/2: Keeping in view our borrowing powers, the Government is about to exhibit a huge map of the colony of Victoria, with the motto ‘The great loan land’ written underneath.
1890		Morn. Bulletin (Rockhampton, Qld) 7 Feb. 4/7: New Zealand lay under a heavy cloud of financial depression. The Government had been too eager to develope the resources of the colony; they had borrowed too heavily for the immature powers of the people, and the name of the ‘great loan land’ was given in derision to the struggling colony.
1901		Arrow (Sydney) 14 Sept. 4/4: Australia. She’s growing greater and more grand, / But still she is the Great Loan land.
1902		Table Talk (Melbourne) 30 Jan. 10/2: Under the heading, " ‘The Great Loan Land,’ he says:— ‘There has been a vigorous controversy in the Times between Lord Wemyss and the Hon. W. Pember Reeves, Agent General for New Zealand, as to the true financial and social condition of that land of high ideals and sad disappointments.
1914		Bulletin (Sydney) 10 Sept. 34/2: So those at the head of the oil industry in Loan Land are filled with hope these days, and already see Frequent Dividend, Exq., coming over the horizon.
1915		Bulletin (Sydney) 2 Sept. 11/3: Maoriland’s Government statistician has been digging into the cost of living in the Loan Land.