Dunnies

  Consider a very basic activity – a visit to the lavatory. Today, I need walk only a few paces to the bathroom or toilet, pull down my stretch pants and underpants, and sit on a pastel coloured plastic seat. The toilet paper is to hand, soft, white, or maybe of a tint to match the decor. When I am finished, I push a button, and the shiny white pan is flushed clean. I wash my hands at the nearby matching handbasin, using sweet-smelling soap. At no stage have I been concerned with the risk of encountering a snake or a spider.

typical "dunny"

My grandmother, on the same errand, walked several yards from the house to an outhouse perched over a deep pit. After checking for spiders, she hoisted a voluminous, full length skirt, and several petticoats. With luck her nether garment – if she wore one – had a central split, otherwise she wrestled with tapes or buttons, before subsiding onto a wooden seat with a central hole. Her toilet paper was the squares of newspaper she herself had cut up and attached with string to a nail on the wall.

After re-arranging her clothing, she might sprinkle some lye or disinfectant powder down the hole, before replacing the wooden lid, in hope of discouraging the ever-present flies. Washing of hands would be done at a pump in the yard, or in a tin dish on the veranda. If she happened to be menstruating, she would also have to deal with the soaking and washing of her sanitary towels. At night time, most people preferred to use an enamel or china ‘chamber pot’, frequently kept under the bed.

antique Chinese potty

We had an earth closet just like that at our house in Lubeck, until 1949. I remember watching with interest as Dad dug a new pit, the old one having reached its limit, I suppose. The lavatory was then dragged on timber sliders to its new location. The hole was quite deep, about 10-12 feet I’d say, and I was very frightened afterwards of falling down the hole.

I was also quite familiar with chamber pots (ours was referred to as ‘Auntie’ for some reason) and with pan closets, used in towns like Murtoa and Minyip, where the sanitary contractor removed and replaced the big zinc pans once a week. Neither of these systems uses any water, whereas a septic tank needs water for flushing, so can only be used where there is a reliable water supply. Even today it is mainly the larger towns and cities which have sewage disposal systems, and the rest of us still rely on ‘the septic’.

bog standard potty

 Even in the towns, some families disposed of waste onsite, until quite recently. A friend told me how her father used to dig a deep trench in the backyard and bury the contents of the lavatory pan there. When he came to the end of the trench, he’d start a new one. Apparently he grew excellent vegies.

Aussies are as fond as any of rhyming slang, so it’s not surprising that, when American soldiers were here in large and not always welcome numbers during WW2, the ‘Yanks’ were sometimes referred to as ‘septic tanks’. Just thought I’d share that with you.

For my American readers, "dunny" is Australian slang for toilet, either the room or the specific fixture, especially an outhouse or other outdoor toilets. It is often used to specify a distinction between a flushing toilet and a non-flushing toilet (e.g., a longdrop or thunderbox). First used in print in 1952, the word is believed to be derived from the much older 'dunnakin' (also spelled 'dunnigin' and 'dunegan') meaning privy.