Western Australia CUBs

At a wedding I attended this weekend I met a Qantas flight attendant who works the flights out of Perth that service the small airfields in the vast Western Australia outback and Kimberly areas north of here. Most of the passengers are men who work in the mineral, gas, and oil fields.

These guys make a lot of money. They fly to work and work on site for 3 to 4 weeks. They are usually out in the middle of nowhere. So when they come back to Perth for their 1 to 2 weeks off, they have a few thousand dollars in the pocket. Most are young, in their 20's or 30's, and raking in over $100k AUD a year. All of their expenses (food and lodging) are covered by their employer at the work site. So there is literally nothing to spend money on while they are working.

The flight attendant is single, in her early 30's. I was joking with here about how she must find it dealing with airplanes full of single men who are earning a lot of money. She looked at me horrified. She called them "CUB's", which is a slang acronym for "Cashed Up Bogans". A bogan is Aussie slang for someone who unsophisticated and lower class. She said that most of them spend their free time and money on their utes (Aussie pickup trucks) and getting drunk with their mates.

She was telling me about how they all dress in flannel shirts, boots, and dirty jeans, and scraggly beards. She said that they look like they are with the band ZZ Top.