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The humorous Australian-English expressions cowyard confetti, farmyard confetti and Flemington confetti mean: bullshit—i.e., nonsense, rubbish.

(There have been occasional literal uses in the sense of faeces—cf., below, quotations 5 & 7.)

The following two explanations are from The Australian Language (Sydney and London: Angus and Robertson Ltd., 1945), by Sidney John Baker (1912-1976):

a) [chapter 6: The City, —Good and Bad, page 128]:

We have elaborated few U.S. expressions more than the vulgarism bullsh—t for nonsense or humbug. At least, it is to be presumed that this is an Americanism, although the vast number of variants we have evolved show that we have made it almost a native. Best known of the Australian versions is bullsh, but some of the following run it close: bull dust , bull fodder, bullock waggon, bull’s wool, cowsh, cowyard confetti, Flemington confetti, * heifer dust, meadow mayonnaise, bumfluff, bovril and alligator bull. Bovril is now almost obsolete, but bovrilize, to confuse, render stupid, has developed from it and is still current.
* Derived from the Flemington stockyards, Sydney. This expression was used over the Bathurst (N.S.W.) radio station 2BS in 1937 and caused a local stir.

b) [chapter 10: Peoples and Places, —Local Slang, page 195]:

From their nature—especially from the fact that they commemorate local names—expressions like Barcoo rot, Cunnamulla cartwheel, Grabben Gullen pie, Murrumbidgee whaler, Yarra bankers, Wagga blanket, and Flemington confetti tend to remain localized; but many of them have travelled throughout Australia. This makes the task of fixing their area of influence extremely difficult.

These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the expressions cowyard confetti, farmyard confetti and Flemington confetti that I have found:

1-: From a letter to the Editor, about the Australian Labor Party, by Llew Morgan, published in The Labor Call (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Thursday 28^th January 1932 [page 7, column 3]:

The collective wisdom of Labor’s stablemen decided that the best way to remedy their grevious [sic] oversight during the last three weeks before the race was run, was to produce a bed of political “Cowyard Confetti.”

2-: From an account of the council meeting that had taken place on Wednesday 1^st March 1933, published in The National Advocate (Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia) of Thursday 2^nd March 1933 [page 2, column 5]:

The Mayor and Ald. Hansard clashed. This was after Ald. Hansard referred to the proposed saving if the undertaking was carried to completion without any break in the operations, as a bit of “Flemington confetti.” Ald. Hansard added emphatically that the Department only bound itself to build the wall as high as the money would take it.
Mayor: You are out of order, Ald Hansard. The Department tells us definitely that it would construct the dam, when it contracted for approximately 200,000,000 gallons for £134,000, and now it tells us that it will do the thing for £120,000. That is not “Flemington confetti” but a definite statement from the Public Works Department.

3-: From a letter to the Editor, by Llew Morgan, published in The Labor Call (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Thursday 4^th May 1933 [page 13, column 2]:

When the public of Australia is prepared to swallow large doses of political cowyard confetti, produced by Lyons, it is easily understood why discerning people from overseas refer to us as “Horstralians” and “Asstralians.”

4-: From the title given to a letter to the Editor, about politics, by Llew Morgan, published in The Labor Call (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Thursday 17^th January 1935 [page 10, column 4]—the expression does not occur in the letter itself:

COWYARD CONFETTI

5-: From the column Football, by ‘The Dodger’, published in the Bairnsdale Advertiser and Tambo and Omeo Chronicle (Bairnsdale, Victoria, Australia) of Friday 20^th May 1938 [page 8, column 4]:

We cannot expect any junior club ground to resemble an outdoor billiard table, but the removal of tussocks, bullocks’ skulls, cowyard confetti, etc., would tend to lessen the risk of injury to players.

6-: From The Australian Language (Sydney and London: Angus and Robertson Ltd., 1945), by Sidney John Baker (1912-1976)—as quoted above.

7-: From one of the unconnected paragraphs making up the column They say—, published in The Corryong Courier and Walwa District News (Corryong, Victoria, Australia) of Thursday 6^th June 1946 [page 5, column 3]:

They say—
[…]
That quite a blue has been caused by the use of confetti in the hall. The footballers at Cudgewa on Saturday stirred up a stink with cowyard confetti.

8-: From Jimmy Brockett: Portrait of a Notable Australian (London: Britannicus Liber, 1951), by the Australian short-story writer and novelist Dal Stivens (1911-1997) [page 230]:

I got the idea from Jerry that Dubois was pretty shrewd about most things, but that you could pull the wool over his eyes if you talked enough Flemington confetti about the woes of the working class.

9-: From Hard roads for fast men, by Bill O’Reilly, published in The Sun-Herald (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Sunday 3^rd December 1967 [page 81, column 2]—the following is about the Australian cricket player David Reenberg:

I read with deep concern that this was the first time that Reenberg had tried to bowl really fast this season.
[…]
I read, too, with even deeper concern that someone had to tell him that he had lost the rhythm of his approach to the wickets.
And that having been told this he picked it up like a lost handkerchief and strode on to glory.
To me that represents classic examples of the farmyard confetti theory, aimed solely at making a competent young bowler look ridiculous.

Note: The expression farmyard confetti occurred in a very different sense in the following passage from Life & Work at Canterbury Agricultural College (Christchurch (New Zealand): Printed at the Caxton Press, 1956), compiled by Ian Douglas Blair (1912-1989) [chapter 19: Women at Lincoln, [page 300]:

In 1935 there was a gathering unique in College history when Mary Alexander was married in the Memorial Hall, the bridegroom being David McLeod of London […]. The couple made the first steps towards their married life on Grasmere Station, Cass, beneath a student archway of forks, shovels, gorse knives and a shower of farmyard confetti—wheat.