Every time I visit Mum she asks, “Have you done tinny yet?” Not yet, Mum. Life is busy. Work is mad. The dog has an ear infection, etc. Which must sound like shirking to John and Joe, Mum’s mates at the dinner table, the three of them residents of a care home in Sydney.

Tinny is their hobbyhorse quest I must honour. Forget the boat with its aluminium hull; the origins of that tinny (or tinnie) are obvious. Forget the beer can, or the roughcast shed. The tinny the trio wants sourced is a synonym of lucky. “As in tin-arsed,” explains Joe, an ex-vintner who launched this whole campaign.

Margot Robbie is exporting Aussie slang across the world.Credit: FilmMagic

Stung into action, I hop onto Trove, rake the databases, visit Green’s Dictionary of Slang. The link seems to be money, where tin is quaint slang for the stuff. In The Shiralee (A&R, 1955) by D’Arcy Niland, one miner declares, “Tin-bum, they call me. I get on to opal wherever I sink a shaft.” From opals in........

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