Having a particular interest in the English language, I like reading books like The Story Of English and Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue, and biographies on lexologists like Dr Samuel Johnson and the murderous lunatic (I kid you not) who helped build the original Oxford Dictionary.
One word whose obscure origins do vaguely confound me, but which does fascinate me, is the Australian English term ‘bogan’. Prior to the late 1980s, we would use words like yobbo or ocker to describe someone of somewhat uncouth or vulgar mannerisms and behaviour.
Since then however, bogan has gradually become the word we commonly use across Australia for such individuals.
It appears to have its origins in the Irish surname Bogan. I met someone with that surname about 15 years ago actually, and there is a wine (I have a bottle of it in fact) which is named The Bogan, which was gifted to me last year on retirement and which is far more expensive than what actual true bogans would drink.
There is a Bogan Court in Boronia, in the far outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne. I have never visited it, and I have only very briefly passed through Boronia itself, but I have always had a vague feeling that bogan started as a description of people from that area, permeating out in to the rest of Melbourne from there.
In the early 1990s, there was a TV show called the Comedy Company, featuring a faux school girl Kylie Mole (stage name for the comedienne Marianne Fahey) who would rant at the camera in a mock Broad Australian accent, regularly using the word ‘bogan’ to describe various of her acquaintances and frenemies.
And hence it spread out on the airwaves across Australia, displacing other more local words which had similar meanings.
Let’s look at the words I have collected from my travels and acquaintances across our nation which have meanings similar, if not identical, to ‘bogan’ and which have been largely displaced by our fond Melbourne term of endearment:
Sydney – Westie
Brisbane – Bevan
Perth – Turbo
Canberra – Booner
Hobart – Chigger or Chigwell.
I have not yet discovered what similar term might have existed in Adelaide, and that does bug me.
But this does go to show how Melbourne is culturally dominant in Australia, that our particular version of the Australian English dialect is the one that is most influential. [Editors of the Macquarie dictionary, please do take note. This is important for lasting records of our language.]
Vires Acquirit Eundo! As our Founding Fathers would have said!
Bogan is, to put it mildly, a term used to describe a lot of things that people from my side of the city might like, or that people from my home town might be.
I don’t really mind that. After all, I just fessed up on Facebook to a former colleague as to why I am so fond of Titus Andronicus (mostly because it is Shakespeare’s equivalent of a Road Runner cartoon).
The elitist armchair socialists at The Guardian recently wrote about the existence of a bogan airline. They could have been talking about Jetstar or Virgin Australia (neither of which I am particularly keen on travelling with), but they were not. It turned out they were talking about a challenger called Bonza, which was going to offer direct disounted flights to the bogan market.
Bonza is very much the sort of colloquial Australian expression which could be used by a bogan to describe something which provides one with joy, a bit like Germans use Wunderbar! and Cartman’s Ginger hordes of the night use Huzzah!
Indeed, a google search under the term ‘bogan airline’ yields Bonza Airline’s website as the top hit, greeting us with the sentence: ‘G’day, we’re Bonza, Australia’s new, and only independent, low cost airline servicing regional domestic routes.’
Routes included flights from the Sunshine Coast base (near Australia Zoo, former lair of the Crocodile Hunter) to Newcastle, Mildura, Albury and Melbourne (Avalon Airport). Having been to Newcastle, Mildura and Albury, I can assure you that these are places which bogans would greatly enjoy, although not as much as Bali.
Sadly, it appears that Bonza has just collapsed, leaving its employees and (presumably disproportionately represented) bogan passengers owed considerable money, and employees in particular extremely anxious as to whether they are going to paid in a hurry.
The collapse of Bonza does raise various questions about the morality of the conduct of its owners, who, despite the name, are not exactly bogans, nor even Australian.
Using my online subscription with The Melbourne Age as my source, I have learned that Bonza is owned by a private equity firm based in Miami, 777 Partners. At the end of 2023, two of the planes in the Bonza fleet were redirected to other airlines owned by 777 Partners. Last week, the remaining four planes were seized by AIP Capital, an investment company owned by ACAP, the parent company of 777 Partners. Those planes have been transferred to the aptly named Phoenix Aviation Capital, which is owned by ACAP. This was all apparently a surprise to the Australian based board of Bonza.
[As an aside, ‘phoenixing’ is a term often used, usually pejoratively, to describe the way bankrupt businesses can resurrect themselves under a new company structure, leaving creditors behind in the ashes of the previous company structure.]
Whilst I am not an expert in finance, nor a lawyer, I do have the normal sense of morality and decency of the ordinary person in the street. It appears to me from my above paraphrasing of the news report that the owners of Bonza have suddenly chosen to cut their losses on the business, leaving employees and customers significantly out of pocket. This does not seem at all moral or decent or ethical to me, to say the least.
But that might not be the least, even though that alone smells to high heaven to mug punters like me.
News reports in The Age on Monday have raised accusations of fraud on the part of 777 Partners. Lenders to that company have lodged a lawsuit claimed that it borrowed millions against $US 350 million of assets which either did not exist, or did not own, or which were already committed elsewhere. The lawsuit alleges that there have been fundamental breaches of agreements and double-pledging of assets backing loans to the company. Further, the relationship between 777 Partners and its parent ACAP is extremely entangled.
The people involved as the architects in this debacle are not our loveable bogans. They are sharks in suits who are feeding on our bogans. I really do hope that the courts in New York hold those people accountable, although I fear that this is not going to help the employees or passengers of Bonza in the short term.
Lost For Words! 