post-and-rail tea

Dictionary of Australasian Words Phrases and Usages by Edward E. Morris

slang name for strong bush-tea: socalled because large bits of the tea, or supposed tea, floatabout in the billy, which are compared by a strong imaginationto the posts and rails of the wooden fence so frequent inAustralia.


1851. `The Australasian' (a Quarterly), p. 298:

« Hyson-skin and post-and-rail tea have beensuperseded by Mocha, claret, and cognac.»

1855. G. C. Mundy, `Our Antipodes,' p. 163:

«A hot beverage in a tin pot, which richly deserved thecolonial epithet of `post-and-rail' tea, for it might well havebeen a decoction of `split stuff,' or `ironbark shingles,' forany resemblance it bore to the Chinese plant.»

1870. T. H. Braim, `New Homes,' c. i. p. 28:

«The shepherd's wife kindly gave us the invariable mutton-chopand damper and some post-and-rail tea.»

1883. Keighley, `Who are you?' p. 36:

«Then took a drink of tea. . . .

Such as the swagmen in our goodly land

Have with some humour named the `post-and-rail.'»

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