Some Australian slang in trouble

We read:

"Adelaide Zoo yesterday hastily dropped plans to photograph ginger-haired people to promote the plight of orangutans, after patrons saw red. "We seem to be getting quite a bit of a negative reaction to that request," Zoos SA's director of conservation programs, Kevin Evans, said. "People are possibly more sensitive about it than we thought."

Last week, advertisements ran offering "free Zoo entry for all rangas" during the school holidays. "Ranga" - an abbreviation of orangutan - is a common nickname for redheads.

"We have a campaign over the school holidays because of orangutans being an endangered species - and so are human redheads," Mr Evans said. Less than 2 per cent of the human race has red hair.

Source

South Australia does have its own slang to some extent. I have never heard "Ranga" as slang for redheads -- though "gingernut" and "coppertop" are common. And redheads are often perversely addressed as "blue" or "bluey". My father was a redhead and he was always addressed that way. I doubt that many people even knew his Christian name.