Where "Not Within a Bull's Roar" Comes From
A bull's roar can carry over a very long distance, so being "not within a bull's roar" of something means being nowhere near it at all. The phrase is first recorded in Australia around 1930 and draws on the same tradition of using rural distances and natural phenomena as figurative measures — part of a wider family of Australian expressions that replace standard distances with vivid sensory or animal references.
The phrase can also be used without the negative — "within a bull's roar" means reasonably close — and there's an even more exaggerated version, "within a bee's dick," used for situations requiring extreme precision. The bull's roar is the mid-range option in this informal taxonomy of Australian distances, implying a large but not absurd separation from whatever target you're missing.
Source: wordhistories.net — "'within a bull's roar of': a measure of distance"
"The team wasn't within a bull's roar of winning the grand final."
How Aussies Actually Use It
It's most often heard in sport and competition, describing a team or contestant who fell well short of a result.
It works for distance, chance, or achievement alike — anywhere the point is that something wasn't even in the ballpark.
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