Why is australia called the outback

The word was first used in the mids pretty literally: it was first used an adverb to refer to the space behind a house or a building, and especially the back yard of a house. The Aussies wittily borrowed this sense of out back to refer to the remote interior parts of their enormous continent:.

By the end of the 19th century, the adverb had become the noun outback , and its generic "backyard" use dwindled as outback became more and more identified with the Australian interior. Wait—isn't the vast and arid interior region of Australia actually called the bush? Not quite. The bush generally refers to areas of vegetated wilderness that are not as remote as the outback is.

So while a person living in Sydney may spend their weekend hiking or bushwalking in the bush that lies just outside the city, they wouldn't take a weekend to go wander around the outback. There is, however, an uptick in what's called "outback tourism," so even the outback is getting closer and closer to the city. The "Outback Steakhouse" chain restaurant is, incidentally, not Australian. It originated in Florida. Ask an Aussie to name a truly Australian word, and they might yell "Bonzer!

It can be an adjective "bonzer chaps" , a noun "the game was a real bonzer" , an adverb "the beer went down real bonzer" , and, of course, an interjection of agreement or pleasure "Bonzer! As versatile as bonzer is, it looks like we hit peak bonzer in the middle of the 20th century, and written use has been declining since. So where did bonzer come from? No one is exactly sure. It's slang, which means that it was likely in spoken use long before it showed up in writing.

Our earliest written evidence for it right now is from the early s, though that's liable to change. A number of etymologies have been proposed for it. One theory that has been thoroughly discredited is that bonzer is an adaptation of two Chinese words that mean "good gold. Australia has quite a bit of ranch land, and a list of the country's top 20 exports makes that clear. In that list, you'll find lamb, mutton, and wool. There are approximately 71 million sheep in Australia currently ; compare that to Australia's current population, and there are about three sheep for every person living on the continent.

It's not a surprise that some wool-industry terms have made it into Australian slang, and one colorful member of this genus is dag. A dag, sometimes also called a daglock , is a piece of wool on the hindquarters of a sheep that's covered in dirt and ahem dried excreta. Those dags are not able to be processed when the fleece is sent out for washing and spinning, and so when sheep are sheared, a worker known as a dag-picker would help clean up the fleece for production by cutting or pulling off the section of the fleece full of dags.

People can survive without food for about three weeks, he explains. That means that long before food becomes an issue, it's the heat and the water that'll become crucial.

Both the risks of dehydration and starvation are higher if someone in a weaker physical condition to begin with - which includes children and the elderly. Aside from the dangers of dehydration, it's the heat itself that comes into play. Temperatures can rise well above 40C F during the summer and that means that unsheltered exposure for a prolonged period of time can be deadly.

And when it then is very hot outside, there's a risk the body can't cool down properly. In winter, outback temperatures can drop to freezing levels at night which means that warm clothing is also essential for survival. A car can be spotted much more easily by an aircraft and search missions are usually conducted from the air.

So as long as there is some shelter at or around the car, it's best to stay put and wait to be found - rather than venture out to search for help. It is therefore important to have a Plan B long beforehand, so that you can then stick to that when things go wrong. Uluru apart, most of the interior is just unremittingly unremitting. And yet I love it all. I particularly love the pubs. In the unlikeliest places, in spots so remote that "middle of nowhere" sounds like an aspiration, you will often find an outback pub.

They are a miracle of commerce. To us, the Outback takes in those places in Australia which have millimetres 11 inches of rainfall per year or less and are kilometres from the coast. The orange-brown and tan colours on the map indicate roughly where the Outback is.

Its creeks and rivers are lined with shady River Red Gums. Outback animals are generally small apart from Red Kangaroos and come out at night to escape the heat.

Many of them are little known even by Australians.