25 Jan 2012 - Buckley's chance

I was speaking to another work colleague today about Point Lonsdale, and she told me a story about Buckley, a convict that lived with the local Aboriginal people in the area in the early 1800s. This story, she said, was the origin of the saying, you have "Buckleys chance". I had always heard the saying but I had never associated this story with the saying, so I did a little further research on the subject. It turns out that there is a dispute regarding the saying's origin. A department store called Buckley & Nunn opened in 1851 and continued until 1982 when it was purchased by David Jones. When asking if something was possible, the old saying was you have two chances, Buckely's & None, meaning you don't really have any option because Buckley's & None (Nunn) are one and the same thing. This is the story I had always associated with the saying.

Today however I was told of the other version of the origin of Buckley's chance. William Buckley was an escaped soldier from a colony on the Mornington peninsula, as the area was poor for farming it was decided to abandon the colony. Buckley and some other convicts escaped via boat and landed in the area near the site where the city of Melbourne was later settled. The other convicts went North to Sydney (not realising it was 1000 kms away) but Buckley decided to strike off on this own. He moved around past where Geelong now stands and found a spear sticking up out of the ground, which he adopted as a walking aide. Buckley had originally avoided the local Aboriginal population, however in picking his walking stick he had unwittingly taken the spear from the top of a local Aboriginal's grave. Some local Aboriginal women recognised the spear and believed that he was the returned spirit of their departed relative. Buckley remained living with the Wathaurung people for the next 30 years, until he spotted a ship off the coast and decided to approach the camp who had disembarked from the ship. This improbable tale of survival lead to the saying, you have Buckley's chance or Buckley's and no chance of that happening. Implying that the possibility of something happening was very improbable, if not impossible. After hearing both stories, I much prefer the origin involving William Buckley, for me it fits better with the saying.

If you would like to read more about William Buckley you can on Wikipedia or the Australian Dictionary of Biography. There is also a Wikipedia article on Buckley & Nunn, which contains a section on the saying, Buckley's chance.