This figurative sense is recorded from the 1930s, and derives from the perceived stupidity of the bird. Very commonly in Australian English galah is used to refer to a fool or idiot.
It was Dawes who said at last, "I reckon this galah session's gone on long enough".' Garve, Boomerang (1969): 'For hours the three men chatted. More generally, a galah session is 'a long chat' - A. It is a special time set aside for lonely station women to chat on whatever subject they like'. Flynn in Northern Gateway (1963) writes: 'The women's radio hour, held regularly night and morning and referred to everywhere as the 'Galah Session'. The galah, which usually appears in a large flock, has a raucous call, and it was perhaps this trait which produced the term galah session for a period allocated for private conversation, especially between women on isolated stations, over an outback radio network. Some writers report that galah pie was a popular outback dish. In 1902 the Truth newspaper reports: 'The sunburnt residents of at that God-forsaken outpost of civilisation were subsisting on stewed galah and curried crow'. Some early settlers used the galah as food. It is also known as the red-breasted cockatoo and rose-breasted cockatoo. The bird referred to is the grey-backed, pink-breasted cockatoo Eolophus roseicapillus, occurring in all parts of Australia except the extreme north-east and south-west.
In early records it is variously spelt as galar, gillar, gulah, etc. The word galah comes from Yuwaalaraay and related Aboriginal languages of northern New South Wales.
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