wharfie

plural wharfies

1. AustraliaNew ZealandcolloquialinformalA wharf worker: synonym of dockworker.

   But a group of wharfies rushed the ballot box, opened it, and ripped up some voting slips and threw others over a fence.

   2008, Andrew Faulkner, Arthur Blackburn, VC: An Australian Hero, His Men, and Their Two World Wars, page 152

   3 more examples

   “It’s a twenty-four-hour stoppage,” he said. “The wharfies went to the Arbitration Court for another pound a week for something or other, and they didn’t get it, so they’ve stopped work for a day to show their displeasure […]”

   1952, Neville Shute, chapter 9, in The Far Country, London: Heinemann

   One night, soon after the battle of the Coral Sea, the US transport ship Shenandoah steamed up the Brisbane River to the wharves at Hamilton. She tied up just before eleven o′clock and at midnight a fresh shift of wharfies began unloading her cavernous holds.

   2000, David Crookes, Someday Soon, unnumbered page

   In Fremantle the wharfies were crucial to my preselection. Gordon Harris was the secretary of the Fremantle wharfies, and we got on amicably until he decided to stand against me in 1958.

   2009, Kim Edward Beazley, Father of the House: The Memoirs of Kim E. Beazley, page 131