Phraseology and Culture in English

Australian perceptions of the weekend
85
Research Fellow at the Australia Institute, on ABC Radio National’s The
Business Report, 5 July 2003; cf. Section 2.1) 
The notion of the laid-back Aussie worker taking it easy in the land of the 
long weekend is just one of our cherished beliefs about ourselves to be de-
molished by a book to be published next week, How Australia Compares.
(Ross Gittins, “World champion workers”, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 May 
2004; an almost identical text was printed in The Age, the same day) 
Some have gone so far as to suggest when the change may have occurred. 
Two examples will suffice. In a 1997 report on the screening and subsequent 
discussion of the documentary 40,000 Years of Dreaming, Helen Martin 
questioned as follows the truth of some of cinematographer George Miller’s 
assertions:
One may not agree with all of Miller’s interpretations of Australian culture 
and film history. I would, for example, question statements such as “Austra-
lia in the 90s is the land of the long weekend”. I think that attitude started to 
disappear in the 1970s. (ASE [Australian Screen Editors] Newsletter 15, 
May 1997) 
On the other hand, in the ABC Radio broadcast The world today of 13 Au-
gust 2001, Michael Brissenden observed: “In Australia, we grew up with 
the derisive notion that we were the land of the long weekend, a country 
that likes to relax”. He went on: “But as we all know, the really long week-
end went out with the Leyland P76”. It is not entirely clear whether his 
statement is to be taken literally (the production of the P76, a true icon of 
the Australian automobile industry, ceased in 1975, and no other car has 
ever been designed and / or mass-produced in Australia) or whether it just 
means something like “a long time ago”. However, it further underscores 
the characteristic habit that Australians have of associating cars with week-
end activity. In a fairly recent Volvo advertisement for a new four-wheel-
drive, mention is made of “five days of work, two whole days of play”. The 
adjective whole underlines the importance of the two days of rest that fol-
low five days of work. The text that contains this passage separates two 
photographs, the second of which has been edited and shows a car which 
looks like it is sent through its paces, driven at high speed through mud and 
water; the other picture shows the same vehicle, prim and proper and 
treated with respect. The shining Volvo has the word week printed above it 
in a huge font, the other one the word ends, in an identical font. The adver-
tisement appeared in early 2002 on the back cover of the weekend supple-
ments of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian, called respec-

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86
Bert Peeters
tively Good Weekend (cf. above) and The Australian Weekend Magazine.
Similarly, a commercial broadcast in February 2004 on various commercial 
TV channels portrays the new Mazda Tribute as “a tribute to long week-
ends”.
And the reality is that these long weekends are coming back into vogue – 
thanks to the increased popularity of the flexi-time concept, a system which 
allows workers to bundle their working hours and to take additional leave 
(preferably on a Friday or a Monday). The most astute use all sorts of
excuses to create more such occasions, if ever they feel they don’t have 
them in sufficient numbers. In a report titled “Absence management in
the land of the long weekend”, Engleman (2001: 5) observes that, over the 
years, one of the functions of the term long weekend has been to refer
to “the great Australian ‘sickie’” (a hypocoristic abbreviation of the cor- 
rect term sick leave). On Monday or on Friday mornings, workers “call
in sick”. The sickness is often not too serious, and at times even rather
fictitious.
9
Talking about the “ubiquitous Australian sickie”, Susan Mul-
downey, too, establishes a link between “sickies” (which she reports are 
now also referred to as “doona days”) and living in the “land of the long 
weekend”:
Can’t face work? Why not call in sick? You wouldn’t be alone – around 3% 
of the Australian workforce would happily join you on an average day. And 
after all, you’re entitled to around 10 days sick leave a year – use them or 
lose them. 
It’s this line of thinking that has transformed the ubiquitous Australian sickie 
into something of a national treasure – a tradition to fall back on in times of 
personal need. But this unscheduled absenteeism comes at a cost, and if re-
cent findings are anything to go by, the sickie may have developed into a 
serious condition in the land of the long weekend. (Susan Muldowney, 
“Sick of work”, Australian CPA, March 2003) 
Finally, here is a quote from reporter Max Walsh: 
What’s happened to the land of the long weekend and the pseudo sickie? 
An international survey of hours worked per job per annum has thrown up 
the surprising result that Australians spend more time at the grindstone than 
just about anybody else. (Max Walsh, “And furthermore”, The Bulletin, 30 
July 2003) 
Should we be surprised that lack of motivation to put in a full day’s work 
on Fridays is a problem to which, according to Narelle Hooper in the regu-
lar radio broadcast The world today (ABC Radio, 7 July 2000), “in the land 

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Australian perceptions of the weekend
87
of the long weekend, no one’s come up yet with a reliable solution”? But 
perhaps Australia is no longer the land of the long weekend. “Australians 
work very hard. The myth of the land of the long weekend and other no-
tions of Australian laziness are absolutely unfounded”, claims Sam Levy, a 
graduate from the University of New England (New South Wales), writing 
in the institution’s alumni magazine (Afterthoughts 8:2, November 2000,
p. 5). Similarly, Farah Farouque (“Farewell long weekend, it seems we’re 
all desk-bound now”, The Age, 5 July 2003) reports on the Australia Insti-
tute study by Richard Dennis (see above), a study which “shatters the myth 
that Australia is the land of the long weekend”. Has it become the land of 
the lost weekend? Who is to say? Regardless of the view taken, the fre-
quency of the two phrases (especially the first) shows that the weekend and 
the long weekend continue to play an important role in the collective minds 
of Australians, and to trigger a degree of fascination that, most certainly, 
they do not have to the same extent in other parts of the English-speaking 
world.