The man in blue, chop picnic, an early minute and secret women's business – some fading South Australianisms
A replica of the Man in Blue window from Adelaide Railway Station is now at the national rail museum at Port Adelaide.
The Man in Blue, behind his window under the big arrivals and departures board, was central to the Adelaide Railway Station in its busiest days before 1978. The man in blue, now gone, is one of the South Australianisms fading away. Other fading South Australian idioms include “taking an early minute”, “the chop picnic” and “secret women’s business”.
Adelaide Railway Station was once the centre of all train travel in South Australia and the man in blue knew everything about anything to do with travelling on a train. In 1978, South Australia’s railway system was divided between two owners. The federal-government-controlled Australian National Railways took over all country lines outside the Adelaide metropolitan area while the state government’s State Transport Authority retained Adelaide suburban routes.
The man in blue went with Adelaide Railway Station’s diminishing central role after the state’s country railway services were closed and the interstate rail services – the Ghan and the Overland – were transferred to the Keswick station when the hotel, government offices and convention centre were built over the station platforms.
The old arrivals and departures board, with a mannequin man in blue in place, is preserved at the national rail museum at Port Adelaide.
The German Lutheran influence, as part of the Protestant work ethic, has been credited as behind another South Australian idiom: “taking an early minute”.
In South Australia, school children had been told if they were well-behaved or performed a task successfully they may be rewarded with an early minute: being allowed to leave school a 60 seconds early. In adulthood, South Australians took an “early minute” by leaving work slightly early.
“Chop picnics” are also supposed to be a South Australian, starting in the 1920s and popular through to the 1960s.
The “chop picnic” was a mobile form of a barbecue – an American expression imported in the 1970s.But the chop picnic usually involved a utility vehicle to carry some form of improvised cooking rack, plate or oven to a picnic spot.
Chop picnic food was predominantly chops, sausages, meat patties, onions, bread and “dead horse” (sauce). The News in 1949 describes iron bedsteads set over a trench of blazing logs to cook a night-time chop picnic at Morphettville, raising money for the Glenelg lifesavers.
“Secret women’s business” became part of the South Australian lexicon from the 1990s Hindmarsh Island bridge legal and political controversy.
The proposed bridge to Hindmarsh Island, near Goolwa, was to replace a cable ferry service as part of a marina project. It was opposed by many local residents, environmental groups and Aboriginal leaders.
In 1994, a group of Ngarrindjeri women elders claimed the site was sacred for reasons that couldn’t be revealed. “Secret women's business” became the core of intense legal battles. Some Ngarrindjeri women disputed the claims and the Hindmarsh Island royal commission found that “secret women’s business” had been fabricated. The Howard federal government passed an act allowing the bridge to be built and completed in 2001.
That year, a civil case in the federal court reignited the debate. Rejecting the developers’ claims for damages, Justice John Von Dousa said he wasn’t satisfied the claims of secret women's business had been fabricated. The Ngarrindjeri and their supporters took the decision as vindication and many organisations apologised.
