Bottle-o

a. 1922, Henry Lawson, 1984, Leonard Cronin (editor), A Fantasy of Man: Henry Lawson Complete Works, 1901-1922, Part 2, page 546, Time was when my old friend, Benno the bottle-o, drew his turn-out into the shade of the big old fig-trees under the church at the top of the hill, and went back and thrashed the most notoriously brutal driver well and good.

For travellers have to carry bags, / And swagmen have to hump their swags / Like bottle-ohs or ragmen.

And Pa, that bottle-o, drunk once on misery.

the bottle-oh with the cleft tongue rode his wagon wrapped tight in an old grey blanket and had his battle-oh cries blown westwards before the icy gusts of wind.

Another character was the bottle-o man. He would come around on weekends down the lane standing on a dray driven by an old horse while he cried out: “booooddle-o, any old rags and boddles? Booooddle-o”.

When Kate was a girl living in Albert Park, a lifetime before she met Rex, her bottle-o had some sort of motor truck. Some of us can remember the horse and cart used by the bottle-o, the milk-o, the ice-man, and especially the woodman.