It's a Furphy!
This is one of the famous Furphy water carriers.
See http://www.furphys.com.au/legend/water-cart.html for more information about this historic piece of Australian machinery.
Taken at the Australian Heritage Festival, Jondaryan Woolshed.
View all photos taken: Sunday, 27th August 2006, This photo: 1:45pm
i saw another one at the stockman's hall of fame in longreach too. i was looking at it when and old bloke engaged me in conversation about it.
as for the arabic - i can read urdu, farsi and arabic but though i can recognise many elements of the script here it is highly stylised and difficult to understand.
i'll ask an iranian friend to help.
as an afterthought - maybe its pashtoo - an afghani language....
Hmmm, I'm guessing it's there because they were exported to whatever country that script is from. It just seems so out of place considering the vast amount of english text stamped all over it. Almost a non-sequitur.
It is actually Pitman Shorthand, and is about the evils of strong liqour in comparison to the water of life.
Thanks James, that's really very useful and makes so much more sense than a foreign language on an implement made in Victoria!