Thread: Woodworking Quiz;

Thats easy.
Its a pocket your dog has in his coat.

Woof.

Its where every house in a small section of your neibourhood has a dog, usually identifyable by the red, sleepless eyes of the neibours, and the abundance of barkers eggs.

It can also mean (less commonly) when a tree grows around its own bark.

It is usually worse than it bite pocket

In the old days the boundary riders used to ride their horses up and down the fence lines of the sheep stations to check the wire and repair any breaks. As you know, the fence lines of these stations can be many hundreds of kilometres long and these blokes were away from the homestead for weeks at a time. One of the necessities was a fire at night to boil the billy and cook the rabbit stew and damper that was their staple diet. In the days before safety matches, a bloke had to know how to light a fire by rubbing two stick together. For this to be successful, you required a quantity of very dry, tinder dry you might say, bark. The best way to assure this was to carry a supply of bark around with you. This was carried in one of the jacket pockets, which had a flap to protect it from the elements. The boundary riders would also keep their tobacco and other items in this pocket to keep them dry. It became known as the 'bark pocket'.

Interestingly, it was the use of the pocket to hold tobacco that brought about the old saying "his bark is worse than his bite". The old timers used to call their tobacco 'bite' because it was quite harsh. They would often share their bite with each other and the saying came about when sometimes the tobacco would get mixed up with the bark that was in the same pocket. The tobacco smoked by these blokes didn't smoke too well but bark was rarely an improvement, so it was common for a bloke to be known as having bark that was worse than his bite.

Silent C what the hell have you been smoking.
Cheers
Barry

Originally posted by Baz
Silent C what the hell have you been smoking.
Cheers
Barry

I was wondering the same myself?



Al

Hello Friends,
Dave in OZ had the correct answer as the bark around which normal wood has grown.

Hey mates, cut silent C off as he has been in the sauce too long.

Thanks for your support.

Respectfully,

I've been smoking bite of course. Sheesh..