Phraseology and Culture in English

2. Australia, “land of the {long / lost} weekend” 
The claim that, in Australian English, the word weekend is a key word is 
underpinned by the finding that, among the numerous phrases proposed 
throughout the years to refer to Australia without explicitly naming the 
continent, there are two that actually include the word weekend. They are 
phonetically close, and both include an adjective. “In the late 1970s, Aus-
tralia was described as ‘the land of the long weekend’. Today, some have 
dubbed it ‘the land of the lost weekend’.”
3
2.1. “Land of the long weekend” 
“Australians often believe they live in the land of the long weekend. But 
they work longer hours, have less annual leave and fewer public holidays 
than workers in most other industrialised countries.” Richard Dennis’s 
claim figures prominently in an article by Adele Horin (Sydney Morning 
Herald, 5 July 2003) titled “Whoever said this was the land of the long 
weekend?” Clearly, the question was not meant to be answered – but we do 
know the answer anyway. In 1978, social commentator Ronald V. Conway 
published his Land of the Long Weekend, a book on Australian social life, 
mentality and customs. “Ronald Conway’s immortal description of Austra-
lia”, as Graue (2002: 18) puts it, is reminiscent of the phrase Land of the 
Long White Cloud, the English translation of the name given to New Zea-
land by its aboriginal Maori population. Conway had been guided in his 
choice by the finding that, at the time, Australia was “one of the highest-
ranking Western societies in its number of public holidays” and “probably 
the only country which has arranged so many statutory holidays to fall on a 
Monday, thus establishing the hallowed convention of the long weekend”, 
described a little further as “almost a national symbol” (Conway 1978: 
187).
Conway’s title soon developed into a collocation which is now part and 
parcel of the Australian English landscape. “Known for its public holidays, 
flexitime and rostered days off, Australia has adopted this title with pride”, 
claims the Dinkum Dictionary of Aussie English (Antill-Rose 1990). One of 
its first occurrences as a collocation is in Hill’s (1985: 11) endorsement of 
religious education “in a country so lacking in transcendent vision as the 
‘land of the long weekend’.” Eventually, the association of the phrase with 
a perceived lack of vision, as well as with selfish leisure and pleasure, was 

---

Australian perceptions of the weekend
81
to gain considerable currency. “Three days of pleasure” and “seventy-two 
hours of leisure” are phrases used by the Cannanes, an Australian band, in a 
1996 song titled, like Conway’s book, “Land of the Long Weekend”. The 
dust jacket of Light Source Films’ 1998 video called Bronzed Aussie Gods
dubs Australia “the land of the long weekend and the eternal suntan”, un-
doubtedly an appropriate paraphrase in the case of the life savers on Austra-
lian beaches alluded to in the title. McCallum (1998: 208) describes the 1950s 
as years in which Australians “sat back and lived happily off the fat of the 
land, marketing natural resources for a living and tending their cars, their 
gardens and their children, in that order, on the weekends – in the land of 
the long weekend”. “Getting away from things and a diminishing sense of 
community participation are growing factors in this land of the long week-
end”, writes Robarts (2000: 4), who also refers to indications, by social 
commentators, “that Australians are becoming more self-centred, material-
istic, and disengaged”. According to Jenny Wanless, one particular ideol-
ogy which should “appeal to the land of the long weekend, where lazy days 
at the beach or the cricket ground have traditionally been treasured”, is that 
of the so-called Slow Cities movement.
4
In some cases, the phrase land of the long weekend has been used to lit-
tle effect, except to add some stylistic variety. Thus, on 25 April 1999, in 
the ABC Radio broadcast Books and writing, poet Ron Price recited an 
autobiographical poem in which, after talking about his first twenty-seven 
years in Canada (where he was born), he elaborated on the next twenty-
seven years saying: 
Then I moved to
the Land of the Long Weekend 
where humour was, and is, 
a way of life and I learned to laugh 
and be the entertainer, the talker 
and I talked with the best of them. 
Nothing in the entire text, as recited, reveals a preoccupation with either lack 
of vision, or selfish leisure and pleasure. A similar remark applies to the 
following excerpt: 
Even after the dotcom bust, the promise of greater opportunities and better 
pay is still luring Australian IT workers overseas. For many, months quickly 
become years, but many still dream of returning home to the land of the 
long weekend. (Adam Turner, “The grass is greener”, Sydney Morning He-