Etymology

mulga wire

mul·ga wi·re

Today it means: An informal gossip network, especially in a rural area such as the outback; also, a component in the network (either a person or an imagined wire). Full definition →

Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

From mulga (“any of a number of small acacia trees, especially Acacia aneura, forming dense scrub in dry inland areas of Australia; (by extension) the outback”) + wire (“telecommunication wire or cable”), possibly modelled after bush telegraph.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.