Austral English Part 32

[Here again its dust is noted as the distinguishing feature of the wind, just as sand is the distinguishing feature of the `sirocco' in the Libyan Desert, and precipitated sand,--`blood rain' or `red snow,'--a chief character of the sirocco after it reaches Italy.]

1847. Alex. Marjoribanks, `Travels in New South Wales,' p. 61:

"The hot winds which resemble the siroccos in Sicily are, however, a drawback ... but they are almost invariably succeeded by what is there called a `brickfielder,' which is a strong southerly wind, which soon cools the air, and greatly reduces the temperature."

[Here the cold temperature of the brickfielder is described, but not its dust, and the writer compares the hot wind which precedes the brickfielder with the sirocco. He in fact thinks only of the heat of the sirocco, but the two preceding writers are thinking of its sand, its thick haze, its quality of blackness and its suffocating character,--all which applied accurately to the true brickfielder.]

1853. Rev. H. Berkeley Jones, `Adventures in Australia in 1852 and 1853,' p. 228:

"After the languor, the la.s.situde, and enervation which some persons experience during these hot blasts, comes the `Brickfielder,' or southerly burster."

[Cold temperature noticed, but not dust.]

1853. `Fraser's Magazine,' 48, p. 515:

"When the wind blows strongly from the southward, it is what the Sydney people call a `brickfielder'; that is, it carries with it dense clouds of red dust or sand, like brick dust, swept from the light soil which adjoins the town on that side, and so thick that the houses and streets are actually hidden; it is a darkness that may be felt."

[Here it is the dust, not the temperature, which determines the name.]

(2) The very opposite to the original meaning,--a severe hot wind. In this inverted sense the word is now used, but not frequently, in Melbourne and in Adelaide, and sometimes even in Sydney, as the following quotations show. It will be noted that one of them (1886) observes the original prime characteristic of the wind, its dust.

1861. T. McCombie,' Australian Sketches,' p. 79:

"She pa.s.sed a gang of convicts, toiling in a broiling `brickfielder.'"

1862. F. J. Jobson, `Australia with Notes by the Way,' p. 155:

"The `brickfielders' are usually followed, before the day closes, with `south-busters' [sic.]."

1886. F. Cowan, `Australia, a Charcoal Sketch':

"The Buster and Brickfielder: austral red-dust blizzard; and red-hot Simoom."

This curious inversion of meaning (the change from cold to hot) may be traced to several causes. It may arise--

(a) From the name itself. People in Melbourne and Adelaide, catching at the word brickfielder as a name for a dusty wind, and knowing nothing of the origin of the name, would readily adapt it to their own severe hot north winds, which raise clouds of dust all day, and are described accurately as being `like a blast from a furnace,' or `the breath of a brick-kiln.' Even a younger generation in Sydney, having received the word by colloquial tradition, losing its origin, and knowing nothing of the old brickfields, might apply the word to a hot blast in the same way.

(b) From the peculiar phenomenon.--A certain cyclonic change of temperature is a special feature of the Australian coastal districts. A raging hot wind from the interior desert (north wind in Melbourne and Adelaide, west wind in Sydney) will blow for two or three days, raising clouds of dust; it will be suddenly succeeded by a `Southerly Buster' from the ocean, the cloud of dust being greatest at the moment of change, and the thermometer falling sometimes forty or fifty degrees in a few minutes. The Sydney word brickfielder was a.s.signed originally to the latter part--the dusty cold change. Later generations, losing the finer distinction, applied the word to the whole dusty phenomenon,and ultimately specialized it to denote not so much the extreme dustiness of its later period as the more disagreeable extreme heat of its earlier phase.

(c) From the apparent, though not real, confusion of terms, by those who have described it as a `sirocco.'--The word sirocco (spelt earlier schirocco, and in Spanish and other languages with the sh sound, not the s) is the Italian equivalent of the Arabic root sharaga, `it rose.' The name of the wind, sirocco, alludes in its original Arabic form to its rising, with its cloud of sand, in the desert high-lands of North Africa. True, it is defined by Skeat as `a hot wind,' but that is only a part of its definition. Its marked characteristic is that it is sand-laden, densely hazy and black, and therefore `choking,' like the brickfielder. The not unnatural a.s.sumption that writers by comparing a brickfielder with a sirocco, thereby imply that a brickfielder is a hot wind, is thus disposed of by this characteristic, and by the notes on the pa.s.sages quoted. They were dwelling only on its choking dust, and its suffocating qualities,--`a miniature sirocco.' See the following quotations on this character of the sirocco:--

1841. `Penny Magazine,' Dec. 18, p. 494:

"The Islands of Italy, especially Sicily and Corfu, are frequently visited by a wind of a remarkable character, to which the name of sirocco, scirocco, or schirocco, has been applied. The thermometer rises to a great height, but the air is generally thick and heavy ... . People confine themselves within doors; the windows and doors are shut close, to prevent as much as possible the external air from entering; ... but a few hours of the tramontane, or north wind which generally succeeds it, soon braces them up again. [Compare this whole phenomenon with (b) above.] There are some peculiar circ.u.mstances attending the wind... . Dr. Benza, an Italian physician, states:--`When the sirocco has been impetuous and violent, and followed by a shower of rain, the rain has carried with it to the ground an almost impalpable red micaceous sand, which I have collected in large quant.i.ties more than once in Sicily... . When we direct our attention to the island of Corfu, situated some distance eastward of Sicily, we find the sirocco a.s.suming a somewhat different character... . The more eastern sirocco might be called a refreshing breeze [sic]... . The genuine or black sirocco (as it is called) blows from a point between south-east and south-south-east.'"

1889. W. Ferrell, `Treatise on Winds,' p. 336:

"The dust raised from the Sahara and carried northward by the sirocco often falls over the countries north of the Mediterranean as `blood rain,' or as `red snow,' the moisture and the sand falling together... .The temperature never rises above 95 degrees."

1889. `The Century Dictionary,' s.v. Sirocco:

"(2) A hot, dry, dust-laden wind blowing from the highlands of Africa to the coasts of Malta, Sicily and Naples... . During its prevalence the sky is covered with a dense haze."

(3) The ill.u.s.trative quotations on brickfielder, up to this point, have been in chronological consecutive order. The final three quotations below show that while the original true definition and meaning, (1), are still not quite lost, yet authoritative writers find it necessary to combat the modern popular inversion, (2).

1863. Frank Fowler, `The Athenaeum,' Feb. 21, p. 264, col. 1:

"The `brickfielder' is not the hot wind at all; it is but another name for the cold wind, or southerly buster, which follows the hot breeze, and which, blowing over an extensive sweep of sandhills called the Brickfields, semi-circling Sydney, carries a thick cloud of dust (or `brickfielder') across the city."

[The writer is accusing Dr. Jobson (see quotation 1862, above) of plagiarism from his book `Southern Lights and Shadows.']

1890. Lyth, `Golden South,' vol. ii. p. 11:

"A dust which covered and penetrated everything and everywhere.

This is generally known as a `brickfielder.'"

1896. `Three Essays on Australian Weather,' `On Southerly Buster,' by H. A. Hunt, p. 17:

"In the early days of Australian settlement, when the sh.o.r.es of Port Jackson were occupied by a spa.r.s.e population, and the region beyond was unknown wilderness and desolation, a great part of the Haymarket was occupied by the brickfields from which Brickfield Hill takes its name. When a `Southerly Burster' struck the infant city, its approach was always heralded by a cloud of reddish dust from this locality, and in consequence the phenomenon gained the local name of `brickfielder.' The brickfields have long since vanished, and with them the name to which they gave rise, but the wind continues to raise clouds of dust as of old under its modern name of `Southerly Burster."

Bricklow, n. obsolete form of Brigalow (q.v.).

Brigalow, n. and adj. Spellings various.

Native name, Buriargalah. In the Namoi dialect in New South Wales, Bri or Buri is the name for Acacia pendula, Cunn.; Buriagal, relating to the buri; Buriagalah == place of the buri tree. Any one of several species of Acacia, especially A. harpophylla, F. v. M., H.O. Leguminosae. J. H.

Maiden (`Useful Native Plants,' p. 356, 1889) gives its uses thus:

"Wood brown, hard, heavy, and elastic; used by the natives for spears, boomerangs, and clubs. The wood splits freely, and is used for fancy turnery. Saplings used as stakes in vineyards have lasted twenty years or more. It is used for building purposes, and has a strong odour of violets.'

1846. L. Leichhardt, quoted by J. D. Lang, `Cooksland,'

p. 312:

"Almost impa.s.sable bricklow scrub, so called from the bricklow (a species of acacia)."

1847. L. Leichhardt, `Overland Expedition,' p. 4:

"The Bricklow Acacia, which seems to be identical with the Rosewood Acacia of Moreton Bay; the latter, however, is a fine tree, 50 to 60 feet high, whereas the former is either a small tree or a shrub. I could not satisfactorily ascertain the origin of the word Bricklow, but as it is well understood and generally adopted by all the squatters between the Severn River and the Boyne, I shall make use of the name. Its long, slightly falcate leaves, being of a silvery green colour, give a peculiar character to the forest, where the tree abounds."--[Footnote]: "Brigaloe Gould."

1862. H. C. Kendall, `Poems,' p. 79:

"Good-bye to the Barwan and brigalow scrubs."

1881. A. C. Grant, `Bush Life in Queensland,' vol. i. p. 190:

"Now they pa.s.s through a small patch of Brigalow scrub. Some one has split a piece from a trunk of a small tree. What a scent the dark-grained wood has!"

1889. Ca.s.sell's `Picturesque Australasia;' vol. iv. p. 69:

"There exudes from the Brigalow a white gum, in outward appearance like gum-arabic, and even clearer, but as a `sticker' valueless, and as a `chew-gum' disappointing."