Boong

I heard Bruce tell one of the drinkers he'd bought a place in Queensland where you could ‘still call a Boong a Boong’.

‘[…]I quit the feds because I didn't want to be a showpiece boong cop.’

“Yeah,” he said, “them boongs are a useless lot. The sooner they all die off, the better.” “And why is that?” Bill asked. “The Abos are nothing but a pack of boozers. All they wanna' do is get pissed.” The man glared at his beer. “Useless, they are.”

A couple of boongs came down and carried me up to the hut where our R.A.P. corporal was.

During the War the soldiers generally referred to Papua New Guineans as “Boongs,” a name also given to black Americans. It is not a nice word, but is fair to say that the Aussies held the boongs in quite some affection during the War.

[Department of Information cameraman Damien] Parer's views on mateship encompassed both the Papuans and the soldiers: at one point he wrote ‘“no boongs, no battle”, implying that natives and diggers were equal partners in their fight against the Japanese.’⁷¹