Two-up

From the image of a wily digger playing two-up, to a prime minister at the track or the tables, the construction of gambling is as an activity quintessentially Australian.

The origins of two-up remain obscure. It probably derived from ‘pitch and toss’, a game British youths had played since the late eighteenth century. In Australia pitch and toss was first recorded in the 1850s on the Victorian goldfields, and in New Zealand as a street game on the West Coast in the early 1870s. Two-up evolved as a variant, becoming popular in Australia in the early 1890s, and in New Zealand a year or two later, as labouring men from both countries traversed the Tasman Sea in search of work.

Perversely, Scorps chooses not to punt on Anzac Day and won′t go near two-up, probably because his losses will be too public.

Some of us rode two-up as we travelled in convoy to the beach.