"A claim without gold is termed a `shicer.'"
1861. Mrs. Meredith, `Over the Straits,' c. ix. p. 256:
"It's a long sight better nor bottoming a shicer."
1863. `Victorian Hansard,' May 10, vol. ix. p. 571:
"Mr. Howard asked whether the member for Collingwood knew the meaning of the word `shicer.' Mr. Don replied in the affirmative. He was not an exquisite, like the hon. member (laughter), and he had worked on the goldfields, and he had always understood a shicer to be a hole with no gold."
1870. S. Lemaitre, `Songs of Goldfields,' p. 15:
"Remember when you first came up
Like shicers, innocent of gold."
1894. `The Argus,' March 10, p. 4, col. 7:
"There are plenty of creeks in this country that have only so far been scratched—a hole sunk here and there and abandoned. No luck, no perseverance; and so the place has been set down as a duffer, or, as the old diggers' more expressive term had it, a `shicer.'"
(2) Slang. By transference from (1). A man who does not pay his debts of honour.