My grand father ran a lot of the high tension wires along the Snowy Mountain Hydro Electric Scheme from the hume Weir in Victoria. During the 1950's my grand father worked with a lot of italian immigrants who were asked to work on that project as per the free passage agreement in place at the time.
From what i know, WOG refered to anybody in Australia who was of Southern European ethnicity, and not the British version of the meaning as such. It doesnt abreviate to anything like other forms of the term. The British version which refered to brown people and a shortening of the word Gollywog, which today is a PC removed word from English language mainstream vocab.
I'd say it refered to people who had dark curly hair etc.
The Australian version is very loosely based on the previous British example, historically.
The word wog in Australia these days isnt termed as offensive, most people who of southern european ethnicity refer to themselves as wogs. Watch the movie the WOG BOY and the very successful stage show, Wogs out of work, made famous by Melbourne comedian Nick Giannopoulos.
Careful, swear words used by Tony the yugoslavian farkin, in the video clips below..lol wogs out of work 