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tomboller
a large playing marble: Have a shot at a tomboller. Also, tombowler, tombola.
Editor's comments: Spelling? Tombola? Tombowler?
Contributor's comments: Used in Victoria. A tombowler was a marble two or three times larger than an ordinary marble. At Primary school, Marble season was the period of time between cricket and football season and vice versa. Tombowler would form part of the litany before many contests. i.e. "..no tracks, no fudging, no misses, no raising, no checkers, no tombowlers ....." The litany often lasted longer than the game. It was sometimes covered by "no nothing" unless somebody got in first with "no no nothings".
Contributor's comments: In the late 1940's, at primary school in the Tully area of N Qld, the large marbles were "tombolas", the smallest were "dinkys"?, and when we started a game or maybe we were sent back to the start, it was going back to "tor(e)s"? "taws"?
Contributor's comments: Used in my childhood in playing marbles, in Exmouth, WA; also used by my children in Perth, WA, currently.
Contributor's comments: [Melbourne informant] I always thought it was a `Tom Bola'.
Contributor's comments: [Melbourne informant] The word 'tombola' can also be used as a description of something that was good, or fun, preferably both, as in "That's a tombola!", or "What a tombola of an idea."
Contributor's comments: [Navy informant] Tombola aka Housie, Bingo.
Contributor's comments: As a child in Melbourne, we used to call the large marbles 'tomboller'. Not sure how you'd spell it.
Contributor's comments: In SA we...used Alleys, Doogs, Catseyes, and Tom Bowlers for large glass ones.
Contributor's comments: [Terms] used in 50's and 60's - special types of marbles (alleys) were called: Tom Bowlers, cat's eyes, blood suckers.
Contributor's comments: I went to primary school in Newport (3015) in the 50s and 60s and ...Big marbles were called tombolas and favourites were taws. Others were called after their colours, there were birdcages (an internal net pattern) and americans (opaque with three colours).
Contributor's comments: At Amberley RAAF base (Near Brisbane) in the 60's "tombola" night was actually a large bingo game, thus renamed so as to circumvent any licencing laws.
Contributor's comments: At my children's (former) primary school in Sydney, we have always held a fund raiser called Tombola. Students bring in jars, bottles or other containers filled with (mostly) food items, but sometimes knick-knacky things. When we have the fair, numbers are stuck onto the containers, people buy tickets and win the jar or whatever. Always one of the most popular stalls, it is also an enormous money raiser! (Money for jam, you could say!) Has anyone else heard this use of the word???
Contributor's comments: Doogs was used in Harvey [WA] schools in the 1950s and 60s as the name for marbles. Large doogs were "Tom Bowlers".
Contributor's comments: Presumably from the Italian game of Tombola or bingo that involved drawing out large, numbered balls.
Contributor's comments: We used to play alleys in the outer Northern suburbs of Melbourne in the the 1960's. Typically they were the clear ones, while the opaque ones were 'aggies' or 'agates', and the big ones were 'tombolas' (that's a guess at the spelling)