go bush

present singular third person goes bush · participle present going bush · past went bush · participle past gone bush

1. AustraliaNew ZealandTo abandon one's normal surroundings and live in the bush; to flee into the bush; to revert to a feral nature

   Groote riot: Police fear those responsible for deaths may have gone bush and be difficult to locate

   2015, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, news headline, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-08/groote-riot-police-fear-those-responsible-may-have-gone-bush/6922496

   3 more examples

   Taika Waititi and Sam Neill talk about going bush in the director’s latest childhood adventure, The Hunt for the Wilderpeople.

   2016 March 24, The New Zealand Herald

   Kitty was now living at Pan Quee's station in Humpty Doo with her Aboriginal husband Lukana and her father Yuliera. During the war they had all gone bush so as to avoid compulsory evacuation.

   2006, Regina Ganter, Mixed Relations: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in Northern Australia, University of Western Australia Press, page 175

   I can't come to you. I'm too weak to ride. I'd have to ride, because for one thing the white-ants have eaten the wheels of my buckboard, and my one cart-horse has gone bush with the brumbies.

   1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter VIII, in Capricornia, page 125