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going to work at Coles (or Woolies)


An expression used up to the mid 1950s (or later) in rural areas of Victoria and southern NSW. It was a veiled euphemism to justify the sudden disappearance from the area of a teenage girl. A secret way of passing the message around that the unmarried, hapless girl was pregnant with an unwanted child and was going to Melbourne for the birth and possibly have the baby adopted: We hear that (so and so) has gone to work at Coles (or Woolies).