yes i read that or similar - and certainly the references to the gold fields. one historian searched letters from Australians from the days of gallipoli and couldn't find reference in those to the Australians using digger to describe themselves. Its interesting that article quotes Bean as he is also purported to have said
n opposition to the gold fields theory, the renowned war correspondent and author of the Australian Official Histories, C.E.W. Bean, laid the origin of the term squarely with the New Zealanders. In Volume IV of his histories, Bean records during the Third Battle of Ypres August-September 1917,“It was at this stage that the Australian soldiers – in particular, the infantry – came to be known, together with the New Zealanders, as ‘the Diggers’.
The term had occasionally been heard before, but hitherto had been general only among the New Zealanders, who are said to have inherited it from the gum-diggers of their country. It carried so rich an implication of the Anzac infantryman’s own view of his functions that it spread like fire through the A.I.F., and by the end of the year was the general term of address for Australian or New Zealand soldiers.”
Similarly to Bean, in A.G. Pretty’s ‘Glossary of Slang and Particular Terms in Use in the AIF (1921-1924)’, he also attributes the origin of Digger to the New Zealanders,“Mate, friend. Used in the second or third person. This term had been in use on the Aust. gold fields, and New Zealand Kauri gum fields for many years prior to the war. It was not until the end of 1917 or early 1918 that it came into universal use in the A.I.F. or N.Z.E.F.The first to use the term, to any extent were the New Zealanders from whom it quickly spread through the A.I.F.”
personally i wouldn't have a clue but i thought arguing over Australian or New Zealand origins seemed less terrible than arguing about Australians
