The Australian National Dictionary beta

Cultural Sensitivity Warning: Please note that due to the nature of this reference work as a historical dictionary and form of historical record, it contains terms that are offensive.

Select preference: [Hide sensitive content|Show sensitive content]

expanded quote list ⇕text sizeexpand long entries ⇕

cabbage garden n. Hist. (Also cabbage patch, cabbage State.) [Probably from the relatively small size of Victoria compared to New South Wales etc., or perhaps from the vegetable crops grown there.] The State of Victoria.

[1860 Sydney Morning Herald 4 Aug. 3/6 Some persons extolled the roads in Port Phillip as so much superior to ours, but he would remind them that, in point of extent, Port Phillip was only a cabbage garden as compared with New South Wales.]1882 Bulletin (Sydney) 8 Apr. 8/1 There is a town in the ‘Cabbage Garden’, where, after a lot of exertion, two or three were gathered together to petition for rain.   1889 J.H.L. Zillmann Past & Present Austral. Life 30 ‘The cabbage garden’, old cynical Sir John Robertson of New South Wales, once called Victoria.   1898 M. Davitt Life & Progress 112 Victoria  ..  is referred to colloquially by people in sister colonies as ‘the cabbage garden’, owing to its relative smallness of area.   1905 Bulletin (Sydney) 7 Dec. 14/1 In Perth  ..  vegetables  ..  are cheaper than and equal to those I’ve met in Victoria the cabbage State.   1923 Nat. Rev. (London) Apr. 296 Only nine of the 48 United States equal Victoria for vastness, but in Australia, the land of bloated, weed-grown, unmanageable political estates, it has been nicknamed in derision ‘the Cabbage Garden’.   1941 Bulletin (Sydney) 30 Apr. 16/2 In that same Cabbage Garden, in a spot infested with boxthorn hedges.   1951 Bulletin (Sydney) 14 Feb. 12/3 There’s nothing new in maggies building among phone-wires in the Cabbage Garden.   1960 Bulletin (Sydney) 27 July 16/2 Two travellers from the Cabbage State on a six-week holiday trip to the Pacific Islands are taking their motor-scooter.   1967 G. Jenkin Two Yrs. Bardunyah Station 71 And I tell you what—I’ll never go back to the Cabbage Patch again!   1970 Austral. (Sydney) 31 Oct. 3/3 ‘Cabbage patch history’ was the way a leading Australian historian yesterday described the Victorian Government’s Captain Cook bicentenary awards—now the centre of a growing literary career.

   Derivatives:

cabbage gardener n.

1882 Argus (Melbourne) 3 Jan. 16/2 He referred to the recent allusion to Victoria by Sir John Robertson, in which the colony was termed ‘a cabbage gardener’, and said that he (Mr Bent) had been called by some people ‘the cabbage gardener’.   1892 West Austral. (Perth) 12 Feb. 2/2 When the season opened New South Wales seemed on paper to have the best intercolonial eleven, and it seemed almost a certainty that for the first time in the history of the matches they would gain a lead of Victoria, yet once more have the cabbage gardeners got away.   1903 Sporting News (Launceston) 24 Jan. 6/3 Subsequently shipped to the other side, he opened the eyes of the ‘cabbage gardeners’ by winning an important event.   1940 Bulletin (Sydney) 3 Jan. 16/2 Down on the Hopkins  ..  a shoal of what we Cabbage Gardeners call salmon trout had come in.


cabbage patcher n.

1941 S.J. Baker Pop. Dict. Austral. Slang 16 Cabbage Garden (Patch) Victoria. Whence ‘cabbage gardener’, ‘cabbage patcher’, a Victorian.   1976 J. Holmes Govt. Vic. 1 The vernacular descriptions of those who live in the various States as cabbage-patchers, crow-eaters and banana-landers draw on this core of State-centred identity.   1980 Austral. Vet. Jrnl. LVI. 218 The Australian reader may feel upset to read ‘ostertagiasis is most prominent in southern areas such as part of New South Wales’: what about our ‘Sandgroper’ and ‘Cabbage Patcher’ colleagues!


Cabbage Stater n.

1926 Cessnock Eagle 6 July 3/4 Merv. Tedd, who not long ago was fighting in the preliminary ranks, has recently fought his way into possession of the State light-weight championship, met and defeated the Victorian lightweight, Ben Martin, at the Newcastle Stadium on Saturday night, the Cabbage-Stater being delivered into the arms of Morpheus in the third round.   1960 Bulletin (Sydney) 3 Aug. 19/1 Cabbage-Staters and Croweaters reading ‘Curio’s’ dismissal of red-gum for fencing-posts  ..  must have been undecided whether he was having them on.