Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus.) a cockroach.

1998

R.G. Barrett Mud Crab Boogie (2013) [ebook] ‘He couldn’t get in here for the cockroaches,’ said Rinh. ‘Hey, Dogs. A home isn’t a home in the Eastern suburbs without a few Bondi butterflies’.

(Aus.) a piece of human excrement floating in the water.

1992		Canberra Times (ACT) 2 Apr. 13/5: Although this band is named after floating pieces of poo at a Sydney bcach, the Bondi Cigars are so clean they're near ing squeaky.
1997		Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend 8 Nov. 31: Australians outside the brown zone of the Bondi cigar seem remarkably sanguine about the continued pumping of sewage and domestic waste water into our seaways.
2001		A.P. Marais Xenophobe’s Guide to the Californians 49: They have not gone so far as to invent words for these silent infractions of nature’s law – as have the Australians who contributed the term ‘Bondi cigar.’.
2006		Wikipedia 🌐 A major factor in Bondi’s seedy image was the fact that Sydney’s Water Board maintained an untreated sewage outlet not far from the north end of the beach, resulting in the term ‘Bondi Cigar’ – a somewhat exaggerated reference to human faeces floating in on the tide.
2018		O. Gunsberg Back, After the Break n.p.: In the right conditions, raw sewage would come into the bay, giving rise to the famous name for a floating turd, a ‘Bondi cigar’.

(Aus.) to be completely incompetent.

1996

J. Byrell Lairs, Urgers & Coat-Tuggers 132: ‘Garn yer prize aleck! You frigwitted mug! You couldn’t ride a bloody Bondi tram’.

(Aus.) lit. and fig., to attack savagely.

1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 31 Jan. 10/1: (caption of cartoon of a Chinese man stabbing a policeman with an icicle) A pre-historic larrikin administering ‘Bondi’ to a pre-historic policeman with an ice-icle.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 9 May 9/1: All the characters assembled, including the flunkey (Mr. Brown) who had lived with a ‘Dook’ and a ‘Markis,’ and to whom half the gallery would have given ‘Bondi’ if they’d caught him outside.
1894		Truth (Sydney) Feb. 1/8: And if you get the chance, you hear, just give ’em literary Bondi.
1904		Truth (Sydney) 6 Nov. 7/4: Meanwhile Sally Solomons went round the room breaking up furniture, and encouraged the brutal bullies to ‘give him Bondi’.
1913		Brisbane Courier 17 Nov. 6/5: Therefore ho felt it quite safe to give Mr. Speaker ‘Bondi’ — in a political sense, of course. Those acquainted with the ‘push’ [...] will remember that ‘giving him Bondi’ was [...] never exercised, either singly or jointly, unless there was not the slightest chance of reprisals.
1951		D. Stivens Jimmy Brockett 217: I was waiting, too, for the Sunday Chronicle to start giving me Bondi.
2001		P. Durcan Cries of an irish Caveman [poem title] Give Him Bondi.

(Aus.) to leave very quickly, to run off; in fig. use, to ’go’ very fast.

1940		Truth (Sydney) 6 Oct. 2/6: The ‘sevens’ and ‘sixes’ offered went ‘off like a Bondi tram’, and most of the big betting boys not ‘in the know’ had to take fives for their cash.
1943		World’s News (Sydney) 16 Jan. 19/3: ‘Yeh, the Choco went through like a Bondi tram’.
1946		Mercury (Hobart, Tas.) 19 Apr. 3/1: But what of the more recent slang born of the forces? [...] Air Force words such as "doover" (any particular article) [...] ‘shot through like a Bondi tram" (gone AWL), and the Army version, ‘gone through on the padre’s bike,’ are some.
1951		Dly Teleg. (Sydney) 18 Mar. 13/7: ‘If you see a cop let me know— I’ll be through like a Bondi tram — the old woman is after me’.
1952		Sun (Sydney) 11 May 40/2: ‘I didn’t wait. I shot through like a Bondi tram’.
1954		Western Star (Toowoomba, Qld) 30 Apr. 5/4: Booker coming through like a Bondi tram took the pass on his fingertips.
1963		(con. 1944) L. Glassop Rats in New Guinea 180: I’m about to shoot through like a Bondi tram when some Japs come along.
1967		‘Whisper All Aussie Dict.’ in Kings Cross Whisper (Sydney) xxxv 6/1: go bondi: Leave in a hurry. From shoot through like a Bondi tram.
1968		S. Gore Holy Smoke 51: He digs up a boat goin’ to a two-men-and-a-dog place called Tarshish, and shoots through on it like a Bondi tram.
1982		N. Keesing Lily on the Dustbin 98: The embezzler ‘got wind’ of the investigation [...] ‘shot through like a Bondi tram’ and is now believed to be ‘living it up’ overseas.
1983		R. Aven-Bray Ridgey-Didge Oz Jack Lang 14: The boiler started blowing down his Port Melbourne Pier about how her billy lids were now grown and had all Bondi.
1986		R. Beckett Dinkum Aussie Dict. 46: Shot through like a Bondi tram: Somewhat archaic [...] The Bondi tram was notoriously the most dangerous and fastest. It means therefore that the person in question has ‘pissed off at the high port’ or fled very quickly indeed.