phrase

• (of a person) unemployed and having no fixed address.

  More example sentences

  • ‘during the Depression thousands of Australians went on the wallaby’
  • ‘Swagmen and swagwomen tramped the country roads alone or in pairs in search of seasonal work, a situation referred to as ‘on the wallaby’.’
  • ‘With the world rushing towards the Great Depression many old Diggers found themselves out of work, out of luck and out on the wallaby track.’
  • ‘This would encourage them to get on the wallaby when they will surely find a job.’
  • ‘That's the way to get this country back on its feet - by getting the poor back on their knees. Or on the wallaby.’
  • ‘Not-working the river is a grand, unacknowledged tradition: from those carrying their swag on the wallaby with a Wagga blanket to these days of stashed polyester on corrugated Amcor or Visyboard.’

  Synonyms

  destitute, poverty-stricken, impoverished, indigent, penniless, insolvent, impecunious, ruined, pauperized, without a penny to one's name, without two farthings to rub together, without two pennies to rub together