send bush

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Verb

send bush (third-person singular simple present sends bush, present participle sending bush, simple past and past participle sent bush)

1. (Australia, transitive) To send away into the bush (etymology 3)
   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter XI, in Capricornia‎^[1], New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 174:

     Being unable to bring him up to town because the river was in flood at the time, he had given him a good hiding and sent him bush.

   • 1962, William Leonard Joy, The Birth of a Nation: The Story of Early Australia, Specially Commissioned by the Sunday Telegraph, Sydney, NSW, Shakespeare Head Press, p. 136 [2]

     Faced with famine, he armed the best shots among his convicts and sent them bush to hunt kangaroos and emus. He thus started a menace that plagued the colony for years, for, when supplies were adequate, the kangaroo hunters refused to resume their servitude in town.

   • 1992, Bryan Clark, Yammatji: Aboriginal Memories of the Gascoyne, Hesperian Press, p. 119 [3]

     The mustering teams consisted of about twenty men. They were sent bush for up to six months, forbidden to return to the precincts of the homestead unless summoned.

   • 1997, Rosalind Kidd, chapter 6, in The Way We Civilise: Aboriginal Affairs, the Untold Story‎^[4], St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, page 168:

     But from Aurukun, where all the children were sent bush with their parents as a war precaution, MacKenzie feared that ready availability of cash would spell the end for traditional skills.